Vite Deployment Metadata standards advance through three maturity stages. A proposal number is permanent, never reused, and follows the proposal through every stage.
PS documents live in metadata/proposed. A PS is complete enough for early experimentation, review, and implementation, but implementations do not need to be public before entry. A PS may introduce breaking changes as the contract evolves.
DS documents live in metadata/draft. Promotion from PS requires evidence of at least two independent experiments or implementations and resolution of material interoperability questions found during that work. A DS must not introduce breaking changes within an existing metadata version; incompatible changes require a new metadata version as defined in VDM0000.
FS documents live in metadata/standard. Promotion from DS requires at least two independent implementations released as stable features and evidence that they interoperate without implementation-specific coordination. An FS must not introduce breaking changes within an existing metadata version; incompatible changes require a new metadata version as defined in VDM0000.
Create a proposal from metadata/spec-template.md, allocate the next unused four-digit VDM number, and add spec.md plus types.d.ts. Promotion moves the whole VDMxxxx directory to its new stage and updates maturity JSDoc in every exported declaration. Reviewers verify the evidence threshold, backwards compatibility, security considerations, and package export impact.