ODS Levels

ODS defines a progressive maturity model for delivery governance. Teams can adopt one level at a time, with each level building on the previous one.

Level Summary

Level	Name	Focus	Modules
ODS L1	Structured Delivery	Make delivery artifacts machine-readable	01, 02, 03
ODS L2	AI-Aware Delivery	Record AI involvement in the delivery process	04, 05
ODS L3	Evidence-Based Delivery	Produce auditable evidence for releases	06, 08, 09
ODS L4	Governed Delivery (planned)	Enforce delivery policy as code	07

The minimum adoption level. Your branches, commits, and PR descriptions follow a machine-readable structure.

Module	What it ensures
01 Branch Naming	Branches follow `<type>/<description>` format, enabling automated categorization
02 Commit Message	Commits follow Conventional Commits with optional AI attribution
03 PR Description	PRs include Summary, Type, AI Disclosure, Changes, Testing, Checklist

Outcome: Every change has structured metadata that CI systems and AI agents can consume.

[!TIP] Start here. L1 is the foundation.

For teams using AI coding tools. You explicitly record when AI generated code, and you capture CI failures in a structured format.

Module	What it ensures
04 AI Change Review	AI-generated changes have a review protocol (L1/L2/L3)
05 CI Failure	CI failures produce machine-parseable reports with AI explanation

Outcome: You can answer “was this change AI-generated?” and “why did CI fail?” programmatically.

For teams that need audit trails. Every release produces structured evidence of readiness, rollback capability, and deployment verification.

Module	What it ensures
06 Release Readiness	Releases pass evidence-based gates with scoring
08 Rollback Plan	Every release has a documented, verifiable rollback path
09 Production Release Evidence	Deployments produce immutable, auditable evidence bundles

Outcome: Production releases carry machine-verifiable evidence that gates were met.

Future level. Policy-as-code for approval workflows, multi-role sign-off, and automated compliance reporting.

Module	What it ensures
07 Approval Workflow	Declarative, AI-aware approval policies

You don’t need to start at L3. Most teams start at L1:

# .github/workflows/ods.yml
- uses: open-delivery-spec/validate-action@v1
  with:
    check: branch-naming
    branch_name: $

Then add more checks as your team’s governance needs grow.

Term	Meaning
ODS L1 Compliant	All L1 checks pass on every PR / push
ODS L2 Compliant	L1 + L2 checks pass
ODS L3 Compliant	L1 + L2 + L3 checks pass