# Contributing to Telosieve
Telosieve welcomes narrowly scoped research, security, documentation, integration, and implementation contributions. Read [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md), [Product Specification](docs/PRODUCT_SPECIFICATION.md), [Threat Model](docs/THREAT_MODEL.md), and [Release Strategy](docs/RELEASE.md) before changing release-critical behavior.
## Development workflow
1. Start from current `master` with a clean worktree.
2. Create a focused branch and state atomic acceptance criteria.
3. Update implementation, behavioral tests, evidence, documentation, risks, compatibility, and roadmap state together.
4. Run `./scripts/ci-local.sh`. While the repository is private, this is the sole authoritative CI gate; absent hosted checks are policy-compliant and must not be described as passing.
5. Open a pull request describing impact, validation, limitations, and any unresolved evidence gap.
6. Address material review findings and rerun the complete local gate at the reviewed head.
Do not add hosted CI, publish packages, change repository visibility, weaken fail-closed behavior, introduce mutation credentials, or broaden product claims without the separately documented approval gates.
## Engineering expectations
- Prefer the simplest sufficient architecture and bounded resource paths.
- Treat malformed, stale, ambiguous, divergent, unavailable, or oversized evidence as refusal, never success.
- Preserve protocol compatibility unless an explicit migration and versioning decision authorizes a break.
- Add tests through public behavior, including refusal and partial-failure paths.
- Keep secrets, credentials, private keys, evaluator data, and machine-specific paths out of commits, fixtures, logs, and diagnostics.
- Use UK English in project documentation and do not use Unicode U+2014.
By submitting a contribution, you agree that it is licensed under the repository's Apache License 2.0 terms. Participation is governed by [CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md). Report vulnerabilities through [SECURITY.md](SECURITY.md), not a public issue.