Publication containment policy
Effective: 2026-07-16
The public registry is under controlled-publication containment while its
schemas, validators, provenance receipts, and repository rules are being
converged.
Current rules
- Example, test, placeholder, and fictional businesses must never exist below
registry/ or appear in generated indexes.
- Business submissions, verification requests, ownership proof, purchase
references, contact details, and private evidence must use VizAI’s private
intake workflow. They must not be posted in public GitHub issues or pull
requests.
- Public GitHub issues may contain only non-sensitive factual corrections and
links to already-public authoritative evidence.
- Automated agents may prepare and validate a publication branch, but may not
merge a new or modified public profile.
- A maintainer must review the artifact and apply the
human-approved-publication label before the publication-freeze check will
pass.
- Registry changes must be submitted through a pull request. Direct publishing
to
main remains prohibited by policy and must be enforced with a GitHub
repository ruleset.
- Removal-only pull requests are allowed without the publication label so
false, unsafe, or consent-withdrawn records can be contained quickly.
Required repository setting
Repository administrators must configure a main ruleset that:
- creates and uses the
human-approved-publication label;
- requires pull requests;
- requires at least one approval;
- requires CODEOWNERS review for
registry/, index/, schema/, and workflow
changes;
- requires all registry validation and Publication Freeze checks;
- requires conversation resolution;
- blocks force pushes and branch deletion;
- prevents bypass except for emergency removal by designated owners.
Until that ruleset is active, this document and the workflow provide visible
controls but cannot technically prevent an administrator from pushing directly
to main.
Exit criteria
Containment can be replaced by controlled autonomy only after:
- one public entity-profile contract is authoritative;
- the verifier checks schema, semantics, privacy, consent receipt, duplicates,
and index parity;
- publication receipts and deterministic hashes are included;
- repository rules are enforced;
- rollback and emergency-unpublish procedures are tested.