OSS Maintainer — Development skill for Claude Code

oss-maintainer

Maintenance workflows for open-source maintainers, as a plugin for Claude Code and Codex.

`oss-maintainer` turns a project's own practices into assisted maintenance workflows. It prepares decisions with evidence, executes the actions the maintainer authorizes, and verifies the results, while preserving the policies and tools the community already uses. The plugin is the engine; each repository carries its profile in a `.maintainer/` directory, so the context, criteria and procedures of triage, review, release and community facilitation stop being rebuilt in every session.

Product philosophy

The maintainer defines the project's direction and commitments. The plugin makes those choices easier to execute, verify and carry forward. Five principles guide its development:

• The process belongs to the project. Respect its philosophy, stack, governance and strategy; offer useful defaults where needed.
• Autonomy operates within a clear agreement. Carry authorized work through and ask when a new decision is needed.
• Trust is built on evidence. Verify premises and delivered results; keep uncertainty and accepted risk visible.
• Knowledge accumulates in the project. Preserve canonical decisions and run history so work can continue across sessions.
• Attention follows risk. Match investigation, testing and coordination to the impact of the work.

The plugin requires honest evidence and respect for authority, recommends maintenance practices, and lets the repository define its policies. Read [PRINCIPLES.md](PRINCIPLES.md) for that distinction and how it should adapt to different projects. [VISION.md](VISION.md) describes the product's purpose, intended experience and architectural direction; the original market research is in [research/](research/oss-maintainer-landscape.md).

Status

Version 0.3.0. Skills:

Skill	Purpose	Invocation
init	Bootstrap, check and upgrade .maintainer/; readiness per capabil