well it is an implementation detail and it is not at the same time. Github release tags are used as a reference in QS guides so it is a requirement too I think. Even our guides don't emphasize that every QS should be individually consumed which means it is in root and independent itself on other QS/files like parent pom.xml.

Anyway we probably could add before this line https://github.com/jboss-developer/jboss-developer-shared-resources/blame/master/guides/CONTRIBUTING.md#L136
"The quickstart directory needs to be in the root of repository"

And this should provide the consistency for our process, wdyt? We don't need to emphasize a result of distribution assembly when we use the same https://github.com/jboss-developer/jboss-eap-quickstarts/blob/7.0.x-develop/dist/src/main/assembly/assembly.xml which is cloned at the beginning of every quickstart birth or am I wrong?