The Bitcoin protocol shouldn't be specified by invitation private meetings.
Typical consensus rule changes usually take a couple years to mature. By trying to fast track things you are doing exactly what hearn did with bloom filters. I hope Bitcoin has matured to the point that when someone overloads proposal bandwidth the response is just "no" rather than letting it happen.
Bitcoin development right now barely has the bandwidth to be even minimally responsive to basic bread and butter stuff.
I'm confused by this response. There are no private meetings, I've cast a very wide net for this workshop with an open invite on the mailing list, twitter, on
https://utxos.org/workshops/, in addition to reaching out personally to many devs to make sure they were aware of the opportunity. Around 35 people from all different parts of the community have expressed excitement to join (edit: and more, including those who have requested materials for remote participation). How does this differ from Taproot, which also held workshops? I actually didn't know about the workshops until after they happened, I never received a notice that they were occurring, otherwise I would have attended.
Further, I have actually been working on covenants related research for three years now, in public venues. This is a culmination and maturation of that work, and I expect the community and network to embrace this innovation as it gets more review and consensus among developers.