approval-policy
Approval Policy
A decision reached in conversation and written nowhere is a decision that gets made again next week. This skill says where an approval goes and what it has to say. Reach for it whenever a human settles something mid-work — you do not need to be asked.
It records approvals; it never manufactures them. Silence is not approval. Narration the human nodded at is not approval. A previous approval for a similar case is not approval for this one. If you are here because you want to write down an answer you have not actually been given, the thing to do is ask the question.
What counts
An approval is the human answering something that was theirs to answer. In practice:
- A gated name — anything the repo's naming authority says needs their word.
- A scope call — a criterion dropped, a slice merged into another, work split into a new ticket.
- A deviation — code, spec, or ticket departing from what a spec, ADR, or ticket already says.
- A finding declined — a review item, a lint, a warning the human decided not to act on.
- A choice between real options — where you offered two and they picked one.
A decline is an approval. "We are not doing that, because X" is exactly as load-bearing as a yes, and it is the one that gets lost, because nothing lands in the tree to remind anyone it was decided.