Prompt Ownership

Every prompt in a production library has an owner. Not a creator — an owner. The distinction matters. A creator built the prompt. An owner is responsible for it now. Ownership transfers when teams change, projects end, or responsibilities shift. An ownerless prompt is not a neutral artifact — it is a liability. Nobody is responsible for keeping it current, nobody is responsible for deprecating it when it should be retired, and nobody will be found when it starts producing wrong output in production.

Ownership is not a single person. It is a team or a role. "FORGE owns this prompt" is acceptable. "rev-ops-team owns this prompt" is better — it survives personnel changes. The owner has four explicit responsibilities: testing (running validation against the prompt's golden dataset before each version bump), documentation (keeping the metadata current, especially known_failures), deprecation (initiating the retirement process when the prompt is superseded), and handoff (transferring ownership with full context when responsibility changes).

1. Define Ownership on Intake No prompt enters the library without an owner. The intake form requires an owner field. If the submitter cannot name an owner, the prompt is not ready for the library — it is a draft.
2. Assign Team-Level, Not Individual-Level Ownership assigned to individuals creates single points of failure. When that person leaves, the prompt becomes unowned. Assign to a team or role. The team is responsible for designating an internal point of contact.
3. Publish the Ownership Register Maintain a public register: prompt ID, owner team, last test date, status. Any team member should be able to see who owns what and when it was last validated.
4. Audit for Orphans Quarterly Run a quarterly audit for unowned prompts. Any active prompt without a current owner must be claimed or deprecated within 30 days. Unclaimed prompts after 30 days are automatically flagged as deprecated-pending and removed from active search results.