15. Signals, Change Proposals and Governance

Once bottom-up flow was introduced, the system needed a way to handle signals.

A signal can come from:

• a person,
• a customer,
• a team,
• support,
• maintenance,
• operations,
• metrics,
• AI analysis,
• an incident,
• a vendor,
• a market change,
• another community.

But a signal is not yet a decision.

It needs processing.

This led to the lifecycle:

observed signal
↓
draft proposal
↓
classified
↓
triaged
↓
under review
↓
accepted / rejected / deferred
↓
decision record
↓
implementation
↓
verification
↓
source of truth update

AI can help detect signals and draft proposals.

But AI must not own the decision.

This created a healthy role for AI:

AI may reveal what the community cannot easily see. The community decides what it means.

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