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Governance document. This page governs project process or conduct, not current language behavior.

Working groups

A Spock working group (WG) is a temporary, problem-focused study group chartered by the Language Design Committee. It creates the time and structure needed to investigate a difficult question without turning preliminary taste, prototypes, or meeting consensus into language law.

WG work is non-normative and non-authoritative. A WG may gather evidence, compare prior art, run experiments, document disagreement, and recommend that an RFD be written. It cannot accept an RFD, amend the specification, authorize graduation into supported language behavior, or claim permanent ownership of a language area.

Anyone may conduct or publish an informal individual or group study without a charter or committee permission. A charter is required only to use the official Spock WG name, request sustained committee coordination, or create the formal records below. Informal and official studies have the same non-normative status.

When to charter a WG

A WG is appropriate when a concrete language problem:

  • crosses several existing language or implementation concerns;
  • needs sustained prior-art study or reproducible experiments;
  • has multiple credible approaches whose consequences are not yet understood; or
  • benefits from a bounded group with named deliverables and a deadline.

A WG is not required for every RFD. It is not a general interest club, a standing design faction, or a way to reserve a topic indefinitely.

Formation

  1. Start from a triaged language-problem issue.
  2. Identify a Language Design Committee sponsor and a chair.
  3. Ask the committee Secretary to reserve the next unused four-digit WG number in the language-problem issue. Reservation is administrative and does not approve the WG.
  4. Copy 0000-template/ to NNNN-short-problem-name/ using that number, then draft its CHARTER.md.
  5. The committee approves, revises, or declines the charter. On approval it changes the charter status to active and links a public decision record.

Reserved numbers are never reassigned. A declined or withdrawn charter remains as a short historical record so a number cannot conceal a prior proposal. A bootstrap committee decision must say that it used the bootstrap provision.

The charter must name the problem, questions, scope, non-goals, deliverables, membership, evidence standard, operating cadence, target close date, and closure criteria. The sponsor connects the WG to the committee but does not turn WG conclusions into committee decisions.

Lifecycle

StatusMeaning
proposedA charter is under committee consideration.
activeThe committee has chartered the WG and study is underway.
reportingStudy is closed to new scope and the final report is being prepared.
closedThe committee has received the final report or dissolved the WG.
declinedThe committee considered the charter but did not create the WG.
withdrawnThe proposer ended the charter request before a committee decision.

WGs are expected to close. The committee may narrow, pause, or dissolve a WG that leaves its charter, stops producing evidence, cannot meet its closure conditions, or is no longer useful.

How a WG works

WG meetings are preferably focused working sessions and may be held offline. Offline-first must still produce a public design record. Each substantive meeting gets a note under meetings/YYYY-MM-DD.md containing:

  • date, attendees, facilitator, and recorder;
  • agenda and pre-reading;
  • evidence and alternatives considered;
  • disagreements and unresolved questions;
  • non-binding conclusions; and
  • action items with owners and target dates.

A transcript is not required. Reasoning that will be cited by a final report or RFD must be written down in the repository. Conduct or personnel matters are handled privately through the Code of Conduct, not published in meeting notes.

Studies live under studies/ and should be reviewable independently of a meeting. Prefer primary sources, reproducible experiments, realistic examples and counterexamples, and explicit limitations. A WG may use prototypes to learn; prototypes confer no design status.

Outputs and closure

Every WG ends with FINAL-REPORT.md, even if it reaches no recommendation. The report summarizes the evidence, viable options, tradeoffs, dissent, unresolved questions, and one of these outcomes:

  • recommend that a sponsor advance a specific RFD;
  • recommend no language change;
  • recommend a later study after named evidence or dependencies exist; or
  • report that the WG could not reach a useful conclusion.

The committee receives the report and closes the WG in a linked public action record. A bootstrap action must say that it used the bootstrap provision. If an RFD follows, it must independently obtain a sponsor and pass the full RFD process, including public review. WG participation or consensus gives no special vote in that decision.

Directory shape

working-groups/
├── README.md
├── 0000-template/
│   ├── CHARTER.md
│   ├── studies/
│   │   └── README.md
│   ├── meetings/
│   │   └── YYYY-MM-DD.md
│   └── FINAL-REPORT.md
└── NNNN-short-problem-name/
    ├── CHARTER.md
    ├── studies/
    ├── meetings/
    └── FINAL-REPORT.md