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Working Group

The AAF Working Group stewards the framework's development: reviewing contributions, maintaining quality, and guiding the roadmap. Membership is open to practitioners who want to shape how agentic systems are governed.

Terms of Reference

Mission

Develop and maintain a governance-first architecture framework for agentic AI systems that is practical, open, and grounded in production engineering experience.

Scope

  • Author, review, and refine the six pillar documents and cross-cutting foundations
  • Maintain the toolchain: CLI tools, MCP server, trade-off engine, posture scanner
  • Review AI-extracted trade-off data (the "air gap" review process)
  • Guide community contributions and manage the public roadmap
  • Ensure the framework stays technology-agnostic and grounded in evidence

Member commitments

  • Participate in at least one review or contribution per quarter
  • Respond to assigned reviews within 7 days
  • Act constructively and in accordance with the Code of Conduct
  • Disclose conflicts of interest where relevant

Decision-making

During the founding year (through February 2027), the founding maintainer holds final decision authority on all framework changes, membership approvals, and roadmap direction. Members contribute through reviews, PRs, and discussion. After the founding year, decisions move to rough consensus among active members, with a simple majority for contentious changes.

Membership review

  • Membership is reviewed every 6 months
  • Members who have not met the quarterly participation commitment may be moved to emeritus status
  • Membership can be removed at any time by the founding maintainer (during the founding year) or by majority vote of active members (after)
  • Members may voluntarily step down at any time

Intellectual property

All contributions to the framework are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Contributors retain copyright but grant the project a perpetual, irrevocable license to use, modify, and distribute their contributions under this license.

Code of Conduct

Members are expected to be respectful, inclusive, and focused on technical merit. Personal attacks, harassment, and bad-faith participation are grounds for removal. Disagreements should be resolved through evidence and discussion, not authority.

Current members

David Maddock
Founding Maintainer
Framework content · Architecture · Tooling

The working group is in its bootstrap phase. We're actively looking for members with experience in agentic systems, security architecture, developer tooling, and AI governance.

Apply to join

We welcome applications from engineers, architects, researchers, and practitioners who are building or governing agentic systems. You don't need to be an expert in every pillar — bring your strengths and we'll build the team around complementary skills.

Applications are submitted as a GitHub Issue using a structured form. Existing members review applications and respond within two weeks.

Apply to join the Working Group

Requires a GitHub account. Your application will be visible on the public repository.

How it works

  1. Submit your application using the button above
  2. Existing members review and may ask follow-up questions on the issue
  3. Once approved, you'll be added as a collaborator on the repository
  4. Your name and role appear on this page
  5. You'll be assigned to reviews and can propose changes to the framework

Questions? Start a discussion on GitHub.