Dep Create

Skill: Create a DEP as a GitHub Issue

Purpose

Create a new Dynamo Enhancement Proposal (DEP) as a GitHub Issue on ai-dynamo/dynamo. The issue number becomes the DEP number. Also handles adding implementation plans and retroactive DEPs for existing work.

When to Use

When the user wants to propose a new feature, architecture change, or process improvement via the issue-based DEP workflow. Also when adding an implementation plan to an existing DEP, or filing a retroactive DEP for work already merged.

Workflow

Create a New DEP

1. Ask for source material: Prompt the user for a Google Doc, Confluence page, or other NVIDIA-internal document that contains the background, customer context, or detailed requirements. Read it using the appropriate tool (gdocs, Confluence MCP, WebFetch). Include the link in the issue's References section — the document is only accessible to NVIDIA employees and serves as the record for customer-specific context that cannot appear in the public issue prose.

2. Gather required fields from the user and source doc (prompt if missing):

   • Summary: One-paragraph description of the proposal
   • Motivation: Why this change is needed
   • Proposal: Detailed description of the proposed change

3. Determine the area label based on proposal content. Area labels are bare names (e.g., frontend, router, backend-vllm) that correspond to CODEOWNERS teams.

4. Decide template: full or lightweight. Use lightweight if only Summary, Motivation, and Proposal are needed.

5. Create the issue (full DEP):

gh issue create \
  --repo ai-dynamo/dynamo \
  --title "DEP: <short descriptive title>" \
  --label "dep:draft" \
  --label "<area>" \
  --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
## Summary
<summary>

## Motivation
<motivation>

## Proposal
<proposal>

## Alternate Solutions
<alternates>

## Requirements
<requirements>

## References
<references — include internal doc link here>
EOF
)"

For lightweight DEP, use:

gh issue create \
  --repo ai-dynamo/dynamo \
  --title "DEP (light): <short descriptive title>" \
  --label "dep:draft" \
  --label "dep:lightweight" \
  --label "<area>" \
  --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
## Summary
<summary>

## Motivation
<motivation>

## Proposal
<proposal>
EOF
)"

6. Report the created issue number and URL to the user.

Add an Implementation Plan

1. Read the DEP issue and its discussion:

gh issue view <number> --repo ai-dynamo/dynamo
gh issue view <number> --repo ai-dynamo/dynamo --comments

2. Draft the plan with phases, tasks, effort estimates, dependencies, risks, and testing strategy.

3. Post as a comment:

gh issue comment <number> --repo ai-dynamo/dynamo --body-file /tmp/plan.md

Retroactive DEP

For work already merged without a DEP, file with dep:implementing or dep:done and reference the existing PRs.

Notes

• The issue body IS the spec — treat it as a living document.
• dep:draft is applied automatically. PIC changes to dep:under-review when ready.
• For lightweight DEPs, use dep:lightweight label and omit optional sections.
• For plan revisions, post a new comment with a changelog at the top. Do not edit the original — preserve the timeline.
• Customer name stripping: Before creating or updating a DEP, scan the summary, motivation, proposal, and all other fields for specific customer names, company names, or partner names. Replace them with generic references (e.g., "a customer", "a cloud partner", "an enterprise user"). DEPs are public — no customer names should appear in issue bodies, comments, or plans.