# Guidance for Maintainers

## General

- Be a member of the community and treat everyone as a member. Be inclusive.
- Help each other and encourage mutual help.
- Actively post and respond.
- Keep open communication.
- Identify good maintainer candidates from active contributors.

## Pull Requests

- For new PR, decide whether to close without review. If not, find the right reviewers. Another consideration is to ask users who can benefit from the PR to review it.

- For old PR, check the blocker: reviewer or PR creator. Try to unblock. Get additional help when needed.
- When requesting changes, make sure you can check back in time because it blocks merging.
- Make sure all the checks are passed.
- For changes that require running OpenAI tests, make sure the OpenAI tests pass too. Running these tests requires approval.
- In general, suggest small PRs instead of a giant PR.
- For documentation change, request snapshot of the compiled website, or compile by yourself to verify the format.
- For new contributors who have not signed the contributing agreement, remind them to sign before reviewing.
- For multiple PRs which may have conflict, coordinate them to figure out the right order.
- Pay special attention to:
  - Breaking changes. Don’t make breaking changes unless necessary. Don’t merge to main until enough headsup is provided and a new release is ready.
  - Test coverage decrease.
  - Changes that may cause performance degradation. Do regression test when test suites are available.
  - Discourage **change to the core library** when there is an alternative.

## Issues and Discussions

- For new issues, write a reply, apply a label if relevant. For roadmap issues, apply the roadmap label and encourage community discussion. Mention relevant experts when necessary.

- For old issues, provide an update or close. Encourage PR creation when relevant.
- Use “good first issue” for easy fix suitable for first-time contributors.
- Use “task list” for issues that require multiple PRs.
- For discussions, create an issue when relevant.
