Maintainer Evaluation Framework

Use this reference when a claim is ambiguous, severity is disputed, or a technically correct PR may not justify permanent maintenance.

Contents

• Decision model
• Severity
• Evidence strength
• Unmet need and alternative design gate
• Issue disposition
• PR quality and value
• Documentation threshold
• Lifecycle and failure paths
• Concurrency and cleanup ownership
• Better-alternative prompts
• Competing pull requests
• Maintainer comments
• Compact report variants

Decision Model

Treat validity, severity, and merge-worthiness as separate outputs. Also distinguish a Preliminary assessment, which may still require decision-relevant evidence, from a final Maintainer decision. Do not label a provisional positive result as a verdict or final decision.

Severity

• Negligible: no runtime difference, unreachable/unsupported input, cosmetic inconsistency, or harmless edge case. Usually close, document, or decline code complexity.
• Low: real but narrow and recoverable behavior with a simple workaround and no data, security, or compatibility risk. Merge only when the fix is small and strengthens an invariant.
• Moderate: supported use fails or produces incorrect behavior for a meaningful subset. Prioritize a bounded fix and regression test.
• High: common or important use is broken, released compatibility is seriously affected, sensitive data can leak, or persistent corruption is possible. Require urgent strong validation.
• Critical: broadly exploitable security impact, severe data loss, or systemic failure requiring coordinated action. Use only with concrete evidence.

Severity is consequence multiplied by realistic reach and frequency, reduced by recoverability. Do not raise it because prose is alarming or lower it because a diff is small.

Evidence Strength

Before calling a claim confirmed, answer:

• Does the reproduction exercise the same public/internal path?
• Does failure occur on the relevant base, latest release, or target?
• Does the regression test fail without the patch and pass with it?
• Are stale dist, wrong worktree/imports, dependency drift, proxies, caches, runtime conditions, unavailable Docker/sandbox, authentication, quota, and service failures excluded?
• Does an equivalent streaming/non-streaming, provider, runtime, resume, or package-export path differ?
• Is behavior prohibited by a real contract or merely surprising?
• If the patch removes or reinterprets an established observable or explicit test expectation, what did the introducing commit and original tests intend? Treat that history as compatibility-risk evidence, not automatic proof that the behavior must never change.
• For latency, timeout, buffering, backpressure, or cleanup, was observable time or state measured rather than inferred only from mocks?
• For shared asynchronous state, do tests control completion order and prove that a stale failure or cleanup cannot affect the surviving operation?

Use partially confirmed when the symptom is real but cause/reach/scope is wrong. Use unproven when decisive evidence is missing. Use contradicted only when evidence directly disproves the claim.

Unmet Need and Alternative Design Gate

Issue reports often combine a desired outcome with a proposed API or implementation. Treat the proposed mechanism as a hypothesis. Confirm the unmet outcome or violated supported contract before evaluating how well the patch implements that mechanism.

Linked-evidence scope

Evidence from a linked issue applies only when the issue and PR share the same runtime variant, provider or tool type, trigger, supported configuration, and user outcome. A broad title, ordinary reference, Related to statement, or conceptual similarity is not enough. If an earlier change already resolved the concrete reported scenario, an adjacent extension starts with no inherited evidence of need.

Need status

Assign one status before deep implementation review:

• Demonstrated: The exact scope has a concrete supported scenario, real-path reproduction, released compatibility requirement, violated supported contract, repeated demand, or broad invariant with meaningful consequence.
• Plausible but unproven: The code path is possible, but realistic reach, frequency, consequence, provider behavior, or demand is missing.
• Already covered: A reasonable supported workflow already satisfies the outcome.
• Unsupported: The outcome is outside the SDK contract or belongs at a provider, adapter, or caller-owned layer.

Only Demonstrated need can support a merge-worthy code recommendation. Plausible but unproven maps to Needs evidence or Not worth completing, even when the patch is technically correct and its remaining fixes are bounded. Already covered and Unsupported normally map to closure or a simpler non-core alternative.

The need status is an evidence classification, not the issue action. Record observation validity, downstream consequence, need status, and issue action separately. A reported shape or branch difference can be confirmed while the need remains Plausible but unproven and the correct issue action is Close.

Practical-impact gate

Do not accept a change merely because desk review identifies a local logical flaw, defensive improvement, or constructible edge case. Trace the complete consequence chain:

realistic trigger -> supported execution path -> observable or durable effect

A local intermediate inconsistency, redundant operation, surprising branch, or theoretically cleaner invariant is not a demonstrated need when it has no meaningful downstream effect. Reachability, a passing new test, a small diff, and low implementation cost establish neither practical impact nor maintenance value.

For representation-only changes, name the concrete consumer computation, decision, or persisted interpretation that changes before and after the patch. If the patch only changes list shape, placeholder presence, metadata, ordering, or terminology without recovering information or changing a meaningful result, it does not establish practical impact. Contract ambiguity and API symmetry are insufficient by themselves, especially when the current shapes are released or intentionally test-covered.

Use one of these evidence paths:

A known incident, user report, frequency estimate, or production reproduction is not required for a material-prevention case. Require credible reachability and a concrete consequence such as security or privacy exposure, credential leakage, persistent data or state corruption, duplicate external side effects, an unrecoverable compatibility break, deadlock or indefinite hangs, or realistically repeatable resource exhaustion. Do not wait for those outcomes to occur before accepting a proportionate preventive fix.

When the trace ends in a harmless intermediate state, fully recoverable behavior without meaningful operational cost, theoretical cleanliness, or an unsupported scenario, classify the need as Plausible but unproven, Unsupported, or No demonstrated gap as appropriate. Prefer Not worth completing or Close over requesting implementation refinements. Use Needs evidence only when one specific missing reproduction or consequence trace could realistically change the practical-impact decision.

Before accepting an issue or recommending a PR, record:

Classify the result:

• Capability gap: a supported, realistic outcome cannot be achieved with current functionality. Code may be warranted.
• Ergonomics or discoverability gap: the outcome is already possible, but the supported route is confusing or unnecessarily difficult. Prefer documentation, validation, or a narrowly justified convenience improvement.
• Unsupported use case: the desired outcome lies outside the SDK contract or belongs at a provider, adapter, application, or other caller-owned layer. Do not expand the core API merely to make it possible.
• No demonstrated gap: no concrete scenario proves that existing functionality is insufficient. Request evidence or close rather than designing from the proposed mechanism.
• Defect in supported behavior: the existing path violates a documented or established correctness, security, compatibility, or lifecycle contract. A workaround may affect priority or solution shape, but does not erase the defect.

Passing tests for a new implementation establish feasibility and correctness, not need. A FakeModel response, manually constructed provider item, mock, or synthetic fixture does not establish realistic provider behavior, user reach, frequency, consequence, demand, or a material preventive outcome. API symmetry and parity with an adjacent runtime are design arguments, not need evidence. A technically coherent patch can still be Not worth completing when the motivating scenario is hypothetical, already supported, or better solved elsewhere.

Use the counterfactual maintainer test: if the PR did not already exist, would maintainers choose to file and implement the same work from the available evidence? Contributor effort lowers implementation cost but does not create product need or remove permanent maintenance cost.

When the need is not Demonstrated, inspect implementation only far enough to estimate contract, risk, and maintenance cost. Do not convert patch defects, missing tests, or documentation gaps into a request-changes disposition; those become merge blockers only after the need gate passes.

Issue Disposition

Choose one:

• Prioritize: confirmed moderate-or-higher impact or important invariant with no safe workaround.
• Accept, low priority: confirmed low impact, existing supported functionality is insufficient or defective for the demonstrated scenario, and a proportionate fix is plausible.
• Narrow scope: valid core, overstated paths or expected behavior.
• Needs evidence: plausible but missing a supported reproduction, contract basis, or concrete scenario showing why existing functionality is insufficient.
• Close: duplicate, unsupported, unreachable, contradicted, no-op, already addressed by a reasonable supported path, or not worth permanent complexity.

Ask only for evidence that could change the disposition.

For external contribution triage, default a Plausible but unproven need to Close when the current report shows only a logic-level or representation-level inconsistency. Use the Needs evidence issue action only when maintainers intentionally want to keep the issue open and can name one bounded piece of evidence likely to change the decision. A closed issue may still state the concrete evidence that would justify reconsideration.

PR Quality and Value

Assess independently:

1. Need: same-scope evidence demonstrates either observed practical impact or a material preventive outcome that the closest supported capability cannot reasonably address. Do not inherit evidence from an adjacent variant or already-fixed scenario.
2. Correctness: the fix covers the claim and meaningful boundaries.
3. Placement: the invariant is enforced once at the owning layer instead of duplicating existing functionality, patching locally, or moving caller- or provider-owned policy into the core SDK.
4. Consistency: equivalent streaming/non-streaming, provider, runtime, serialization, resume, package, and adapter paths stay aligned.
5. Tests: a regression test fails on base, passes on head, and asserts the non-happy-path value/state. When shared state crosses an asynchronous boundary, tests control relevant completion orders and assert the surviving operation's behavior and final resource state.
6. Compatibility: released exports, package conditions, types, protocols, schemas, and error behavior are preserved or intentionally migrated.
7. Proportionality: public surface and complexity match impact.
8. Completion cost: remaining code, tests, docs, design, and conflict work is bounded enough to justify attention.

A PR can be correct but not merge-worthy because the need is negligible, the outcome is already supported through a reasonable existing mechanism, the real path is unchanged, equivalent paths remain inconsistent, the abstraction costs more than the benefit, or a simpler design exists at another layer.

Do not use implementation correctness, bounded remaining work, CI status, or contributor effort to upgrade a need that is only Plausible but unproven. Merge-worthiness is gated by demonstrated need, not by how close the patch is to completion.

Keep issue severity separate from Patch risk. A patch-induced regression, compatibility break, listener/resource leak, or maintenance hazard does not make the underlying issue more severe.

When a PR exposes an ambiguous semantic boundary, decide whether that boundary belongs to maintainers before drafting requests. If the choice affects SDK contract, compatibility, persistence, error semantics, public API meaning, or cross-path behavior, the review should pick one direction or explicitly block on maintainer input. Do not delegate that choice to the contributor as "either X or Y"; ask for the chosen behavior and the tests or docs needed to lock it down.

Documentation Threshold

Make docs merge-blocking only when:

• Existing docs become materially false, unsafe, or misleading.
• Safe/correct use depends on a non-obvious constraint, migration, compatibility boundary, or operational warning.
• Repository policy, accepted scope, or an explicit maintainer decision requires docs in the same PR and does not require separate release timing.
• The feature is practically unusable or undiscoverable without a user-facing entrypoint and generated/API discovery is insufficient.

Decide documentation necessity separately from current-pull-request timing. If the repository's Documentation Release Timing policy defers required docs/ content because it would describe unreleased behavior, record the need as separately timed work and do not make its absence a blocker for the feature or bug-fix pull request.

Keep optional discoverability/completeness non-blocking. Do not downgrade a code recommendation solely for optional docs or include optional docs in a required-action paragraph.

Lifecycle and Failure Paths

Apply this section when a change adds validation, fail-fast behavior, cleanup, retry, interruption, background work, streaming, or concurrency.

• Identify the earliest point where all dynamic inputs required for a correct decision exist.
• List side effects before and after that point: listeners, promises/tasks, streams, sockets, peer connections, processes, files, locks, caches, state, persistence, and telemetry.
• Trace failure behavior during construction, connection, validation, execution, persistence, and teardown where those phases exist.
• Confirm normal teardown is actually entered. If construction/connect fails, verify explicit cleanup.
• Prefer validation after dynamic configuration is resolved but before avoidable side effects begin.
• Require a regression test for any listener, promise, stream lock, connection, process, file, or state that can remain after failure.

Concurrency and Cleanup Ownership

Apply this section before a positive assessment whenever lifecycle work crosses an await, callback, event, deferred completion, retry, reconnect, cancellation, or shared resource boundary. Sequential correctness is insufficient because the patch can improve isolated cleanup while introducing cross-attempt teardown.

Use a two-operation interleaving matrix during desk review:

For each ordering:

• Enumerate every path that can mutate the resource, including distinct public operations and wrapper or delegate paths. Choose B from the strongest distinct mutator rather than assuming a second invocation of A is sufficient.
• Identify the resource owner before and after every suspension point.
• Distinguish per-attempt resources from shared transport, session, cache, or listener state.
• Require cleanup to carry an ownership token, generation, identity check, compare-and-swap, transaction, proven serialization guarantee, or another invariant at the actual mutation boundary that prevents cross-attempt disposal.
• Compare base and head on the survivor invariant. Fewer duplicates do not justify losing the only active handler, connection, task, or state update. Preserving or restoring A does not justify deleting, reverting, reordering, or hiding B.
• Require a controlled interleaving test when the ordering is reachable. The test must assert both the failing operation and the surviving operation's observable behavior after all completions settle, including agreement between persisted state and caches, indexes, flags, or other derived state.

An unscoped finally, catch, close handler, cancellation callback, or rollback that mutates shared state after a suspension point is merge-blocking when another operation can still own or use that state.

Do not infer exclusive access from intended usage. Treat overlapping operations as unsupported only when documentation, public typing, construction-time validation, or fail-fast runtime enforcement establishes that restriction. Do not dismiss stale cleanup as pre-existing when a patch newly makes that cleanup reachable from another failure, cancellation, retry, or interruption path.

Better-Alternative Prompts

Start with the strongest existing supported path, then test at least one additional alternative against the proposed patch. Do not complete a positive review without this comparison.

• Can the requested outcome already be achieved through configuration, composition, cloning, callbacks, extension points, a custom provider or adapter, or caller-owned code?
• If the existing route is awkward, is the problem discoverability or ergonomics rather than missing capability?
• What happens with no code change?
• Can input validation or an existing helper enforce the invariant earlier?
• Can the fix be limited to the supported failing path?
• Would clearer error or documentation prevent misuse without runtime complexity?
• Can a failing test reveal a smaller correct change?
• Is a new public option compensating for an internal ownership problem?
• Can the same result be achieved in the converter, adapter, or state owner instead of every caller?
• Is the proposed core behavior actually provider- or application-specific policy that belongs at another layer?

Competing Pull Requests

Require an explicit issue link, same reproduction, same violated invariant, or materially overlapping runtime path before grouping candidates.

Choose one portfolio action:

• Prefer one PR
• Prefer one after focused changes
• Combine selectively into a named destination PR
• Replace all with a simpler/coherent implementation
• Merge none

Do not issue independent approvals for overlapping candidates. State the action for every active PR.

Maintainer Comments

Write drafts in English. Produce one when recommending closure, more evidence, focused changes, superseding, or choosing among competing PRs.

Keep it polite, direct, complete, and usually 60-160 words in one to three short paragraphs:

1. Acknowledge the contribution/report.
2. State the decision with decisive technical evidence.
3. Give the exact next action or reconsideration condition.

Use GitHub-native references in every draft:

• Use #123 for an issue or pull request in openai/openai-agents-js.
• Use owner/repo#123 for an issue or pull request in another repository.
• Keep closing keywords native, for example Fixes #123 or Resolves #123.
• Never wrap a native reference in a Markdown link. Write #123, not [PR #123](https://github.com/openai/openai-agents-js/pull/123) or [#123](...).
• Remove Codex-only navigation links, local file links, Codex-only citation markers or footnotes, and app directives from the draft. Preserve ordinary descriptive Markdown links for API docs, design notes, external resources, and GitHub targets that do not have native issue or pull-request syntax.

Before returning the draft, normalize any same-repository URL or qualified reference to #<number>, normalize any cross-repository issue or pull-request URL to owner/repo#<number>, and rescan the draft. Do not return it while a Markdown-linked issue or pull-request label, openai/openai-agents-js#<number>, or bare GitHub issue or pull-request URL remains.

Perform an action-delta pass after the paste-readiness pass:

• Map every imperative sentence to a concrete difference between the current remote head and the desired state.
• Remove requests for behavior, tests, documentation, or scope that the current head already satisfies or that the recommendation does not require.
• Do not use change-request language for Merge-worthy as-is.
• Keep portfolio comparisons out of a contributor-facing draft unless that target is being closed or redirected as a duplicate or superseded implementation.

Do not include internal severity labels, speculate about authorship/intent, repeat the full review, or soften the requested action until it is unclear.

Do not ask contributors to choose maintainer-owned semantics. If two implementations are technically possible but one changes the SDK contract, decide the contract in the review and make the comment actionable. Use a short rationale such as "This keeps the new handler scoped to the existing raise site" or "This makes the handler name match all invalid final messages", then request the exact code and tests for that decision.

Close

Thanks for taking the time to investigate this. I traced the reported case through <path or behavior>, and <decisive finding>. In the supported path, <practical result>, so the added complexity is not justified by the demonstrated impact.

I am going to close this <issue/PR>. If you can provide <specific reproduction or evidence that would change the decision>, we can revisit the underlying problem with that narrower scope.

Request Changes

Thanks for the contribution. The underlying issue is valid, and this approach is directionally reasonable. Before we can merge it, please address the following points: <bounded required changes>.

These changes are needed because <contract, lifecycle, compatibility, or test reason>. Once they are covered with a regression test that fails on the base and passes on the updated branch, the PR should be ready for another review.

Adapt these templates to evidence. Do not use them as filler.

Existing Capability or Better Alternative

Thanks for the contribution. I traced the underlying use case through <existing API or workflow>, which already supports <desired outcome and relevant limits>. The proposed change adds <new contract or complexity>, but the issue does not demonstrate a concrete supported case that the existing approach cannot handle.

I am going to close this <issue/PR> for now. If you can provide <specific scenario showing the existing approach is insufficient>, we can revisit the unmet need and choose the narrowest appropriate design from that evidence.

Compact Report Variants

Use Maintainer decision for a concluded review. Use Preliminary assessment when a desk review is tentatively positive but a decision-relevant evidence gap remains. Verdict is intentionally avoided in the report headings because it does not communicate whether the result is provisional or final.

Additional Runtime Investigation Suggested

## Preliminary assessment

<Tentative issue or PR assessment based on desk review only.>

## Static evidence

- <decisive code-path or test-inspection evidence>
- <what remains uncertain at runtime>

## Additional runtime investigation suggested

- Unresolved question: <the runtime uncertainty that could change the decision>
- Decision impact: <which validity, severity, scope, or recommendation could change>
- Evidence needed: <the observable behavior or state needed to resolve the uncertainty>
- Control: <base, release, or known-good comparison when relevant>

<Suggest a separate runtime investigation without providing an exact command, requesting approval, executing code, or invoking another skill. Do not present a final positive recommendation yet.>

Issue

## Maintainer decision

<Real/partial/unproven/contradicted, severity, and disposition.>

## Evidence

- <decisive evidence>
- <scope or uncertainty>

## Existing capability and alternatives

<Closest supported path, why it is or is not sufficient, and the preferred design alternative.>

## Recommendation

<Prioritize, accept low priority, narrow, request evidence, or close.>

## Maintainer comment draft

<Include for closure or an evidence request.>

Pull Request

## Maintainer decision

<Need, practical impact, and merge-worthiness.>

- Need status: <Demonstrated / Plausible but unproven / Already covered / Unsupported>
- Code recommendation: <code disposition>
- Repository readiness: <one allowed status; only when useful for a merge-worthy recommendation>

## Evidence

- <runtime/code-path result>
- <test/compatibility result>

## Existing capability and alternatives

<Closest supported path, why the demonstrated scenario cannot use it or remains defective, and why this patch is preferable to no code change or a narrower design.>

## Issue impact

- Validity: <claim validity>
- Severity: <underlying issue severity>
- Reach: <realistic reach>

## Patch risk

<Only meaningful patch-induced risk.>

## PR quality

- Solution fit: <assessment>
- Tests: <assessment>
- Remaining effort: <bounded/unbounded and why>

## Recommendation

<Merge, focused changes, simpler replacement, or close.>

## Maintainer comment draft

<Only when closure, evidence, or changes should be requested.>

Competing Pull Requests

## Maintainer decision

<Issue validity, severity, and preferred implementation path.>

## Open PR comparison

| PR   | Approach | Correctness | Tests | Compatibility/complexity | Readiness |
| ---- | -------- | ----------- | ----- | ------------------------ | --------- |
| #... | ...      | ...         | ...   | ...                      | ...       |

## Recommendation

<Select one, request focused changes, combine exact pieces, replace all, or merge none.> <State the action for every other active candidate.>

## Maintainer comment drafts

<One draft for each PR that should be closed, changed, or superseded.>