Stage 1: publish the minimal Project State (PROJECT.md, ROADMAP.md, docs/governance.md, decisions/) #1680

Written-by: Chief

Stage 1 slice of #1550 (owner approved 2026-10-29): give the running organisation its lightweight Project State, before any UI or engine work.

Scope — files only, no code

• PROJECT.md at the repo root: mission, owner and maintainer roles, the repository/resources it covers, governing boundaries (who decides what, what automation may never do).
• ROADMAP.md at the repo root: current initiatives, milestones and priorities; it links Proposal: AI-led Project governance, unified board and Handoff-driven Workflow (five-stage plan) #1550 and names Stage 1 as the active stage.
• docs/governance.md: the decision contract from Proposal: AI-led Project governance, unified board and Handoff-driven Workflow (five-stage plan) #1550 in operational wording — ordinary / major / severe classification, who concludes each, how disagreement and reclassification are recorded, and the escalation path to the owner.
• decisions/ with decisions/README.md (format: date, decision, evidence, participants, dissent, status, links to resulting tasks) and decisions/2026-10-29-stage-1-approved.md recording the owner's approval of Proposal: AI-led Project governance, unified board and Handoff-driven Workflow (five-stage plan) #1550 and the Stage 1 start.

Explicitly out of scope: no change under core/ or plugins/, no new configuration key, no new UI, no scheduler, no rewrite of AGENTS.md (link it, do not duplicate it), no secret or token handling.

Acceptance

• The four paths exist on main and every statement in them is true of this repository today — no invented roles, no promised feature that does not exist.
• docs/governance.md states what the Chief classifies, what a maintainer concludes and what only the owner may decide, consistent with AGENTS.md (the owner decision of 2026-10-21 on self-gating included).
• The decision record links Proposal: AI-led Project governance, unified board and Handoff-driven Workflow (five-stage plan) #1550 and this issue and says the Stage 5 gate is unchanged.
• npm run verify green at the tip (a docs-only change still proves the tree is intact); Docs-not-needed: trailer in both the branch commit and the PR body if no subsystem page is touched.

The umbrella #1550 is not closed by this PR: the body says Part of #1550 and the PR closes this issue only.