feat(docs): define inactivity closure policies for issues and PRs

[WilliamBerryiii]

Description

Defines inactivity closure policies for issues, discussions, and pull requests to reduce noise from stale items.

Issue and discussion policy (GOVERNANCE.md) — Issues inactive for 60 days receive a stale label and warning comment. If no activity follows within 14 days (74 days total), the issue is closed as not_planned with a closed-stale label. Exemptions: pinned, security, do-not-close, and milestone-assigned issues. Discussions follow the same thresholds with manual enforcement until tooling supports automation.

Pull request policy (CONTRIBUTING.md) — Active PRs waiting on the author for 14 days receive a stale label. If no author activity follows within 7 days (21 days total), the PR is closed. Draft PRs are fully exempt. Additional exemptions: do-not-close and waiting-on-reviewer labels.

Policy Summary

Scope	Stale After	Grace Period	Total	Exemptions
Issues	60 days	14 days	74 days	pinned, security, do-not-close, milestone-assigned
Discussions	60 days	14 days	74 days	Same as issues (manual enforcement)
Active PRs	14 days	7 days	21 days	draft, do-not-close, waiting-on-reviewer

Six supporting labels have been pre-created on the repository: stale, closed-stale, do-not-close, pinned, waiting-on-author, waiting-on-reviewer.

Related Issue(s)

• Closes feat(docs): define inactivity closure policy for issues and discussions #442
• Closes feat(docs): define inactivity closure policy for pull requests #443

Type of Change

Code & Documentation

• Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change that adds functionality)
• Documentation update
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)

Infrastructure

• CI/CD pipeline changes
• Build system changes
• Configuration changes

AI Artifacts

• Copilot instructions (.instructions.md)
• Copilot prompt (.prompt.md)
• Copilot agent (.agent.md)
• Skill package (SKILL.md)

Other

• Refactoring (no functional changes)
• Performance improvement
• Test changes only

Testing

• Verified cross-references between GOVERNANCE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md resolve correctly
• Confirmed 6 GitHub labels exist on the repository
• Markdown linting passes

Checklist

Required Checks

• I have read the CONTRIBUTING document
• My changes follow the project coding standards
• I have updated documentation accordingly
• All new and existing linting checks pass

Required Automated Checks

• Markdown linting: npm run lint:md
• Frontmatter validation: npm run lint:frontmatter

Security Considerations

• No secrets, tokens, or credentials introduced
• No new dependencies added
• No changes to CI/CD workflows or GitHub Actions
• All changes are documentation only

Additional Notes

This PR is intentionally scoped to the governance and contributor documentation changes for inactivity policies. The community interaction message templates (Scenario 10 and 11 time-period values) are tracked separately alongside the backlog management pipeline in PR #448.

[github-actions]

Dependency Review

✅ No vulnerabilities or license issues or OpenSSF Scorecard issues found.

Scanned Files

None

[codecov-commenter]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 76.19%. Comparing base (c788095) to head (59716df).

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main     #452      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   76.22%   76.19%   -0.03%     
==========================================
  Files          20       20              
  Lines        3503     3503              
==========================================
- Hits         2670     2669       -1     
- Misses        833      834       +1     

Flag	Coverage Δ
pester	76.19% <ø> (-0.03%)	⬇️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.
see 1 file with indirect coverage changes

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

• ❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Defines and documents a repository policy for closing stale issues/discussions and pull requests, establishing clear inactivity thresholds and exemptions to reduce backlog noise.

Changes:

• Added an “Inactivity Closure Policy” section to GOVERNANCE.md for issues and discussions, including thresholds, exemptions, and reopening rules.
• Added a “Pull Request Inactivity Policy” section to CONTRIBUTING.md for PRs, including author-only inactivity semantics, exemptions, and reopening rules.
• Updated ms.date metadata in both documents.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
GOVERNANCE.md	Adds issue/discussion inactivity lifecycle policy and links to PR policy in CONTRIBUTING.
CONTRIBUTING.md	Adds PR inactivity policy section, TOC entries, and cross-link back to governance policy.

[bindsi]

great improvement and governance for the project

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.