The PEP that establishes the purpose and process for Python Enhancement Proposals is PEP 1.
PEP 1, titled “PEP Purpose and Guidelines,” explains what a PEP is, why the Python community uses the process, and how proposals move through discussion, review, acceptance, rejection, or other statuses. It describes PEPs as design documents that provide technical specifications, rationale, and a record of community decision-making.
The document was created on June 13, 2000, by Barry Warsaw, Jeremy Hylton, and David Goodger; later revisions also credit Alyssa Coghlan. It remains an active process PEP because it documents an ongoing governance and development workflow rather than a one-time language feature.
Several nearby numbers are easy to confuse. PEP 8 is the style guide, PEP 20 contains the “Zen of Python,” and PEP 0 is the index of PEPs. The number itself is therefore not a generic label: PEP 1 is the foundational document for the proposal system’s purpose and operating rules.