[Branden Bonaby (bbonaby)]

📖 Description

Add a public guide explaining how MXC is managed:

• Daily developer/PM triage, primary and supporting area contacts, issue follow-up, and implementation assignment.
• Contribution and review expectations, milestone readiness, twice-monthly release targets, and community prioritization.
• Semantic Versioning 2.0.0, independent SDK/schema versions, and fixes shipping on the current release line rather than through backports.

Link the guide from CONTRIBUTING and the developer index, and align the existing versioning guidance. This is documentation only; it does not change runtime behavior, SDK APIs, schemas, CI, or automation.

🔗 References

• Public guide: docs/repository-management.md.
• Contributor entry points: CONTRIBUTING.md and docs/development/README.md.
• Existing versioning design: docs/development/architecture/versioning.md.
• Fixes Document how MXC is managed #1594.
• Part of Improve contribution and repository-management documentation #1589.

🔍 Validation

• git diff --check origin/main...HEAD — passed.
• Manually checked the changed documentation links and confirmed the PR contains only the four intended Markdown files.
• Runtime builds and tests were not run because this is documentation only.

✅ Checklist

• Signed the Contributor License Agreement
• Linked to an issue
• Updated documentation (if applicable)
• Updated Copilot instructions (if build, architecture, or conventions changed)
• If this PR changes Cargo.lock, the dependency-feed-check check passes (see pull request builds)

📋 Issue Type

• Bug fix
• Feature
• Task

---

GitHub Actions runs the PR validation build automatically. The ADO pipeline
(MXC-PR-Build) is the Azure version of the PR pipeline, kept in parity with the GitHub
Actions build; it runs on merge to main, and Microsoft reviewers with write access can trigger it
on a PR with /azp run. See pull request builds.

If the dependency-feed-check check fails on a new dependency, the crate must be added to
the feed before the PR can pass. See pull request builds
for the steps.

Microsoft Reviewers: Open in CodeFlow

[azure-pipelines]

Azure Pipelines:
There may be pipelines that require an authorized user to comment /azp run to run.

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The documentation-only changes leave runtime behavior untouched, with only a non-blocking clarification remaining.

No open issues 🎉

What changed in this PR

Adds a public guide to MXC’s maintenance and contribution process, linking it from contributor documentation and aligning release-versioning guidance. Changes are documentation-only.

Changes:

• Documents triage, area ownership, contribution reviews, and community prioritization.
• Explains milestone readiness, twice-monthly release targets, and the no-backport policy.
• Clarifies Semantic Versioning and independent SDK/schema versions.

File	Description
docs/​repository-management.md	Adds the public maintenance and release-policy guide.
docs/​development/​README.md	Links the guide from the contributor index.
docs/​development/​architecture/​versioning.md	Aligns versioning and release-line guidance.
CONTRIBUTING.md	Updates triage guidance and links the management guide.

_{Review effort: Balanced}

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The documentation-only changes have no blocking defects; the remaining assignment-wording clarification is minor.

No open issues 🎉

_{Review effort: Balanced}