Make Chaoyue Zhao a Frontend Maintainer

Manager Justification

It's hard to specify hard requirements for becoming a maintainer, which is why the documentation consists of flexible guidelines. Reviewers are encouraged to think of their eligibility for maintainership in the terms of "I could be ready at any time to be a maintainer as long as it is justified".

• The MRs reviewed by the candidate consistently make it through maintainer review without significant additionally required changes.
• The MRs authored by the candidate consistently make it through reviewer and maintainer review without significant required changes.

@andr3: Chao has outlined her readiness for maintainership role below really well. I'd like to thank @markrian once again for his availability as Mentor and would document here my support for Chao to become a Frontend maintainer. Not just her experience but also her commitment to support her fellow engineers and review the work of others fairly have made their way to me as feedback from her peers.

I'm confident her track record below is evidence of her being ready and thus put forth this maintainership proposal.

From Chao

Since joining GitLab in June 2024, I have merged 143 MRs and reviewed 173 MRs in the main repo. I started my frontend maintainer trainee issue in June 2025 and below is a summary of my 50+ reviews, which are listed in my trainee issue.

I have reviewed a good variety of MRs, including Vue.js heavy changes [1] [2] [3], styling heavy changes, changes that involve backend & HAML integration, GraphQL Query/Mutation migration, container queries Migration for repository page, accessibility fixes, gitlab-ui MR and MR generated by Duo.

I have also reviewed a handful of community contribution MRs [1] [2] [3], where I guide contributors through multiple iterations with patches and clear explanations.

When faced with reviews for things I am not familiar with, I take a learning approach and solicit additional reviews from other team members [1] [2].

When needed, I initiate and facilitate discussions for cross-domain collaboration with product designers, technical writers and backend engineers.

My average time from request to comment is 14 hours, which way exceeds our review SLO of 48 hours. When I can't get to a review in time or I don't have enough bandwidth for a full review, I make sure to communicate the expectations explicitly to the author.

I understand the balance between iteration and quality. By leveraging Conventional Comment format, I ensure the author is clear on what is required from them to address/resolve my suggestions/comments.

Over and over again, I am praised for the thoroughness [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] of my reviews. This reduces the number of iterations and therefore echoes our values of efficiency.

I am a firm believer in boring solutions and am great at identifying ways to simplify the code while still solving the problem [1] [2] [3].

Although it seems trivial, I always make sure housekeeping items like milestones, labels, changelog, and commit messages are attached properly. I also share tips on managing MRs with quick actions.

Before Merging (Manager Tasks)

• Close any relevant trainee maintainer issues with a comment indicating that this merge request is being created, as (they are no longer required to become a maintainer).
• Mention the maintainers from the given specialty with the template below and ask them to provide feedback to the manager directly. Emphasize that any negative feedback should be communicated privately to the manager/mentor, not in the merge request, as outlined in our maintainership feedback documentation.
• Leave this merge request open for 1 week, to give the maintainers time to provide feedback.
• Check this box to confirm that you approve the access provision.
• Ensure we have at least 2 approvals from existing maintainers.

Template call to action

`@gitlab-org/maintainers/frontend` Maintainers, please review this proposal to make TRAINEE maintainer of PROJECT.

* If you have blocking feedback adhering [to the documentation](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/workflow/code-review/#request-maintainership-feedback) please share it with me.
* If you are in agreement, and can vouch for this proposal, please approve.

After 1 week, if there is no blocking feedback and at least 2 approvals, I will merge this MR.

Once This MR is Merged

1. Join the [at]frontend-maintainers slack group

2. Let a maintainer add you to <project>/maintainers/frontend with Owner access level.

3. Announce it everywhere

4. Familiarize yourself with documentation for Merging a merge request

5. Keep reviewing, start merging 🤘 😎 🤘