Source: extracted verbatim from the Engineering PRD, docs/prd/19-release-plan.md (REQ-DOC-004). From M0 onward this file is the canonical, living ADR record; status changes happen here and in the index, with the PRD text remaining the historical record.
Status: Accepted. Context: solo maintainer (OA §10), boring-on-purpose (T8), charter SemVer commitment. Problem: choose branching and release mechanics that keep every mainline state releasable with one maintainer. Constraints: milestone-gated releases (REQ-MS-001); charter §7.5 SemVer rules; no long-lived branch divergence is tolerable at a bus factor of one. Alternatives: GitFlow (rejected: ceremony without a team), release trains (rejected: milestone-gated releases fit a contract-driven plan better). Decision: trunk-based + milestone-tagged releases + manual publication of CI-built drafts. Consequences: every merge to main is releasable by construction (master prompt Part 11 repository-evolution rule). Reconsideration: multi-maintainer future. Related: REQ-REL-001..003.