Purpose
This document defines the minimum requirements for proposing, reviewing, and approving changes to constitutional artifacts and high-impact policy components in the Pnyma system. It ensures that changes are deliberate, auditable, and safe.
Required for Constitutional Changes
- Change rationale — documented justification referencing specific constitutional articles or operational evidence.
- Diff of impacted principles — explicit statement of what is added, removed, or modified.
- Regression benchmark rerun — full evaluation suite executed against the proposed change.
- Safety sign-off — review and approval by designated safety authority.
- Rollback plan — explicit procedure to revert the change if post-deployment issues emerge.
Review Process
Submission
Changes are submitted as versioned pull requests against the canonical constitution artifacts under constitution/.
Review
Each submission receives:
- constitutional impact assessment,
- benchmark result review,
- safety finding review,
- compatibility check against subordinate documents.
Approval
Approval requires sign-off from the designated governance authority. Major revisions require broader review before acceptance.
Blocking Conditions
A change is blocked when any of the following are present:
- unresolved high-severity safety findings,
- drift threshold exceeded in benchmark rerun,
- missing audit artifact,
- rollback plan absent,
- constitutional incompatibility not resolved.
Emergency Changes
In cases of critical safety incidents, an expedited track is available with the following requirements:
- immediate safety rationale documented,
- change scope minimized to the necessary intervention,
- full review completed within 48 hours of deployment,
- rollback prepared and tested before deployment.
Documentation Requirements
Every approved change must produce:
- a version-tagged constitutional artifact,
- a signed approval record,
- a benchmark result summary,
- an impact statement for subordinate documents.