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ADR-0012: Solo-owner merge policy: zero required approvals

Guide

ADR-0012: Solo-owner merge policy: zero required approvals

  • Status: Accepted · Date: 2026-05-31 · Approved by: Kevin Wong

Context

KLMS is a single-owner repository. The sole human contributor is Kevin Wong; AI agents (Claude Code) author most branches and PRs. GitHub’s branch protection requires at least one approving review before merge, but the required_approving_review_count can be set to 0 — meaning CI is the sole automated gate.

Setting required_approving_review_count=1 would deadlock the repository: GitHub does not allow a PR author to approve their own PR, and there is no second human account with repository write access.

Decision

required_approving_review_count is set to 0. The merge gate is: (1) a pull request is required (no direct pushes to main), (2) the verify CI job must pass, (3) branches must be up to date with main. Auto-merge is enabled and is used for both Dependabot PRs and human-authored PRs once CI passes.

This is a deliberate, documented choice — not an oversight.

Consequences

  • PRs merge automatically on CI green with no human review delay. This is intentional and acceptable for a single-operator system.
  • CODEOWNERS is present but require_code_owner_reviews is false — the file documents ownership intent, not an enforcement gate.
  • If a second human contributor is ever added, this ADR must be revisited: set required_approving_review_count=1 and remove auto-merge for human-authored PRs.
  • Extra-large PRs (size/xl) have no escalation gate. The author is responsible for breaking up large changes where practical.

Review trigger

Revisit this ADR when: a second human contributor is granted write access, or when the repo becomes public.