Contributing

The project welcomes contributions from developers, researchers, engineers, privacy specialists, and technical writers. The glossary defines shared terms. Preserve code identifiers and quoted text exactly.

For dense engineering text, name the component and its action. Preserve concurrency ownership, operation order, atomic boundaries, failure behavior, and resource limits.

python -m pip install -e .
python -m compileall -q context_cache library_of_context
python -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Changes must preserve durable storage before eviction. They must preserve bounded prompts, recent-event visibility, outbox recovery, local operation, and privacy boundaries.

Open a request for comments (RFC) issue for a high-impact change. High-impact changes affect persistence, ordering, security, message brokers, retrieval policy, or a public application programming interface.

Provide quality and latency evidence for a performance change.

Write explanatory prose in one editorial present. State behavior, constraints, failure modes, and operational reasons. Do not narrate the prompt, author process, or edit history. Do not state when explanatory content entered the repository relative to other content. Put necessary chronology in history, status, plan, migration, compatibility, or citation documents.

The repository's timeless technical prose skill defines the review procedure. Use active voice and American spelling. Limit descriptive sentences to 25 words. Limit procedural sentences to 20 words. Do not use contractions or semicolons.

A substantial proposal must explain its reason and alternatives. It must identify non-goals, adoption triggers, evidence gates, failure behavior, and rollback.

Read Why These Improvements?. Use the Decision Brief Template. Follow ADR 0001 for changes to thread identity, scope, promotion, runtime ownership, or durable schema. Follow the contributor quality workflow.

Read the full CONTRIBUTING.md for testing expectations and contribution areas.