maintainer-decline SKILL.md skillA
maintainer-decline from posit-dev/skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add posit-dev/skills/maintainer-decline@git:20260521.928d934Pins git:20260521.928d934 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- posit-dev/skills
- Path
open-source/maintainer-decline/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260521.928d934, committed May 21, 2026
- Size
- 9,452 bytes
- Repository stars
- 552
- License
- MIT
Guide for drafting issue closure and decline responses as an open-source package maintainer. Use when helping compose a reply that says "no" to a feature request, closes an issue as won't-fix, redirects a user to a different package, explains why a design choice is intentional, or otherwise declines or closes a community contribution. Also use when the maintainer needs to explain a deprecation, point out a user misunderstanding, or communicate an effort/scope tradeoff to a contributor.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Maintainer Decline Help an open-source maintainer compose responses that close, decline, or redirect issues while leaving the contributor informed and respected. ## Core Philosophy Closure is not dismissal. A well-crafted decline educates, unblocks, or redirects the contributor productively. The goal is that someone reading your response walks away understanding *why* — even if they didn't get what they asked for. ## Principles **Explain the why, not the what.** Contributors understand they're being told "no." What they need is the reasoning: strategic direction, design philosophy, effort/benefit tradeoff, or the actual technical root cause. **Validate before declining.** Acknowledge the contributor's point before the redirect. Phrases like "Yeah," "This is a reasonable idea," or "I think..." signal that you heard them before delivering the decision. **Offer a path forward when possible.** Even a "no" can come with "but you could..." or "use X instead." Leave the contributor unblocked or pointed in the right direction. **Use "we" for design decisions.** "We believe," "we've decided," "we experimented with..." positions decisions as team choices, not personal gatekeeping. …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add posit-dev/skills/maintainer-decline@sha256:3fbddc56953dc41eThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260521.928d934, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_xhneibbro2jsw7ro)
3 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on May 21, 2026.
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (9452 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
posit-dev/skills · 552 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-11-02 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_xhneibbro2jsw7ro GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=posit-dev/skills/maintainer-decline GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/3fbddc56953dc41e2f7911aee211b2f85bdf96de16258d6e3d5628e6885462a3
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.