Question: Is there a canonical repo for pre-governance and pre-PEP discussions and drafts?

Yeah, that’s definitely a significant issue, sure, especially lately, and one a number of others have vocalized too. When it comes to summing up the results of a discussion, accepted and rejected ideas and key points can and ideally should be documented as part of the PEP, e.g. in the Rationale, Rejected Ideas and other sections as appropriate, at least once its ready for resolution (and both we PEP editors and PEP delegates try to at least nudge authors to make sure they do this).

However, as to continually providing an updated summary of each current discussion in progress; this would generally require at least one person who is well-versed, -motivated and -resourced, along with deciding on a venue to post such roundups (such as a weekly Discourse thread).

Perhaps the packaging newsletter that @pradyunsg proposed would be a good fit for this, if carefully curated, but of course as with almost anything in the packaging space, the key constraint seems to be simply finding people with the expertise, motivation and bandwidth to do it. If you’re volunteering, I’m sure you’d be a great fit for this—but I understand if its too much of a commitment.

Theoretically, that’s something perhaps a suitably trained LLM could help summarize. However, that would raise a whole minefield of issues, and I and I’m sure many others would be quite skeptical of its accuracy, particularly on such a specialized topic. I’m not sure there’s really a substitute for at least one diligent human per thread following along and writing up a summary (like, e.g., LWN sometimes does).

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