governance: establish and verify a qualifying independent PR approval path

[seonghobae]

Control-plane gap

Naruon's effective live default-branch merge contract requires a qualifying non-author approval, and the repository writer still cannot prove a durable independent human review path from current observable repository state.

Fresh control-plane evidence on 2026-09-01 against protected develop@042b0c70531b229af3acbd0421a2f23098d848b3:

• repository ruleset 17214772 (Lock default branch) requires 1 approving review, dismisses stale reviews on push, requires approval after the last push, requires review-thread resolution, and requires strict exact-head statuses opencode-review, trivy-fs, osv-scan, dependency-review, backend (Python 3.14), and frontend; it exposes no bypass actor;
• repository ruleset 15586698 (PR) requires zero approvals by itself but still requires stale-review dismissal, review-thread resolution, and the same strict status set;
• inherited organization ruleset 18156473 (CWL Central required workflows) requires 1 approving review and review-thread resolution and requires the current central workflow set. It currently has require_last_push_approval=false; the effective last-push approval requirement nevertheless remains because repository ruleset 17214772 requires it;
• no active rule above currently requires CODEOWNER review;
• protected current .github/CODEOWNERS is still * @seonghobae;
• the GitHub integration available to this writer cannot enumerate the complete current collaborator/team inventory through its exposed repository tools, so the older 2026-08-17 collaborator observation must not be treated as fresh proof that no other eligible human exists;
• model/bot comments, check/status conclusions, author actions, dismissed reviews, predecessor-head reviews, and self-approval are not qualifying independent approval evidence.

This is a governance-verifiability and availability defect, not authorization to weaken protection or use an administrative bypass.

Required governance action

Establish or expose a verifiable existing durable independent human approval route that GitHub can count under the live rules while preserving segregation of duties. Acceptable paths include:

1. grant an appropriate human organization member/collaborator the minimum repository access required to submit counted PR reviews; or
2. configure an existing human review team with repository access and expose enough repository/team metadata to the installed automation integration to verify eligibility rather than guess it.

If a qualifying human path already exists, no protection change is required: provide verifiable collaborator/team evidence and prove it on a bounded test PR.

Do not reduce required review counts, disable stale-review dismissal or last-push approval, grant a model/bot identity human-review authority merely to make it count, self-approve through another identity, invent a reviewer/team, or use an admin bypass. The inherited organization ruleset currently exposes an OrganizationAdmin bypass mode, but this Naruon writer is explicitly prohibited from relying on it; repository ruleset 17214772 also exposes no bypass route.

Acceptance evidence

• Fresh collaborator/team inventory proves at least one eligible independent human reviewer in addition to the PR author, or an equivalent GitHub-verifiable review-team route.
• A bounded test PR proves GitHub accepts a formal APPROVED review from that reviewer on the exact post-last-push head.
• The approval is visible as a formal review submission, not a comment, status, check, reaction, model judgment, dismissed review, or author action.
• Existing exact-head CI/security/coverage/package/provenance/thread-resolution/required-workflow gates remain unchanged and fail closed.
• An otherwise gate-clean PR can merge through the normal protected path without admin bypass.

Why this remains open

The repository writer can verify the one-approval requirement and the current CODEOWNERS file, but it cannot currently enumerate enough live collaborator/team authority to prove that an eligible independent human route exists. Close only when the route is positively verified and exercised; do not close merely because a model reviewer comments or because administrative bypass is technically available.