openprose__prose/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to OpenProse

OpenProse is a programming language for AI sessions, expressed as durable Markdown contracts. Good contributions make agent workflows more readable, reviewable, versioned, reusable, inspectable, and cheaper to trust over time.

This repository is the open-source language, skill, standard library, and examples. It is not the hosted product roadmap, billing surface, subscription marketplace, or private operating plan. Contributions should strengthen the public substrate that any Prose Complete host can run.

Contribution Bar

A strong OpenProse PR should:

• Start from a concrete use case or run observation. Name the workflow, agent failure mode, customer-shaped need, or completed run that made the change necessary.
• Address one responsibility. If the work fixes docs, CLI behavior, and a std pattern independently, open separate PRs.
• Respect the language/framework/harness boundary. Put semantics in the skill and interpreter docs and reusable contracts in packages/std/; harness implementations live outside this repo (see the README's Harnesses section).
• Make the library more developer-friendly and agent-friendly at the same time: clearer for humans to review, easier for agents to execute correctly.
• Add or identify a retestable mechanism. Use existing tests when they cover the change; add a focused test or eval when they do not.
• Reduce sprawl. Prefer one precise contract, example, test, or CLI behavior over a broad feature sweep.

Project Tenets

Use these when deciding whether a change belongs:

• Markdown source defines intent. Authored *.prose.md files say what must be true; runtime and harness code should not smuggle in semantic policy.
• Outcomes stay decoupled from implementation. Users declare the result or desired state; OpenProse can improve models, retries, and program structure beneath that contract without changing the user's intent.
• The skill and interpreter docs define semantics. Contract Markdown, Forme, Prose VM, ProseScript, and Responsibility Runtime are the load-bearing language/framework surface.
• The harness serves IR and launches runs. The CLI can validate, compile, serve local triggers, forward commands to a selected harness, and report deterministic status. It should not become a second VM.
• Contracts before choreography. Prefer ### Goal, ### Requires, ### Maintains, ### Continuity, and ### Invariants; use ### Execution only when order, loops, retries, gates, or branches are actually part of the requirement.
• Renders stay isolated. A node's scratch stays private to its session and workspace/; only the declared ### Maintains truth (or a function's ### Returns) is published.
• Forme wires; nodes do not discover each other. Responsibilities declare what they require and maintain; Forme matches Requires.<facet> to Maintains.<facet> and draws the subscription edge.
• Responsibilities are standing goals, not cron jobs. Keep the source semantic; compile and serve lower it into a wired topology, wake sources, and receipts.
• Harness and model agnostic by default. A change should work across Prose Complete hosts unless it is explicitly in a host adapter or CLI harness.
• The public OSS repo remains disciplined. Hosted product concepts such as billing, subscriptions, royalties, subscriber identity, and amortization economics belong outside the language unless a minimal public hook becomes necessary later.

Where Changes Belong

Change	Put It Here	Notes
Contract syntax, section meaning, authored kinds	skills/open-prose/contract-markdown.md	Keep examples current and agent-readable
Wiring semantics and dependency injection	skills/open-prose/forme.md or packages/std/ops/wire.prose.md	Specs define behavior; std contracts expose reusable operations
VM execution, run state, bindings, run-typed inputs	skills/open-prose/prose.md and skills/open-prose/state/	Do not move VM semantics into the CLI
Responsibility Runtime, compile/serve/status doctrine	skills/open-prose/responsibility-runtime.md and compiler docs	Keep responsibilities semantic; compile creates concrete IR
Reusable roles, patterns, evals, ops, delivery, memory	packages/std/	Only promote repeated, use-case-agnostic behavior
Company-operation starter contracts	packages/co/	Opinionated company-as-prose building blocks
Agent-facing routing and activation guidance	skills/open-prose/SKILL.md, AGENTS.md	Keep globally loaded guidance concise
Examples that teach a complete pattern	skills/open-prose/examples/	Include enough context for an agent to run or adapt them
Public contribution/process guidance	CONTRIBUTING.md	Keep it public, practical, and aligned with the repo

Setup and Tests

The repo is Markdown plus one conformance suite. There is nothing to build:

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile   # vitest only
pnpm test                        # the conformance suites under tests/open-prose/

The suites read skills/open-prose/**, spec/**, and the example corpus off disk and make string assertions; they need no model key and no network. CI runs the same command (CI - Skill conformance) on every PR that touches the skill, spec, tests, or example surface.

Testing Expectations

Every PR should say how it was tested. Prefer the narrowest check that can fail again in the future when the behavior regresses.

Change Type	Expected Checks
Skill or doc behavior	pnpm test:skill
Skill/spec docs	Link/structure checks plus a small scenario showing how an agent should route the command or file
*.prose.md std/co contracts	Structural check for frontmatter and required sections; add or update a kind: test when behavior is executable
Examples	Run or dry-run the example in a Prose Complete host when practical; otherwise document the missing host capability
Docs-only copy	git diff --check, link existence checks, and examples reviewed for current command names

If no deterministic test exists yet, say that plainly in the PR and either add the smallest useful test or explain why a future eval is the right follow-up.

PR Description Shape

Use progressive disclosure. Maintainers and agents should understand the change from the top, then dig into examples and verification when needed.

1. Summary — what changed in 3-5 bullets.
2. Use Case / Run Evidence — why this change exists. Include run IDs, issue links, user-visible friction, or a concrete workflow.
3. Design Boundary — why the change belongs in the files you touched, and why it does not belong in the skill, CLI, stdlib, or hosted product instead.
4. Examples — inline before/after snippets, command examples, or a minimal *.prose.md fragment when the change affects authoring.
5. Testing — commands or evals run, plus key results.
6. Residual Risk / Follow-ups — what remains intentionally out of scope.

Keep the PR body honest. If the change only improves docs, do not imply runtime behavior changed. If the change needs a future hosted product feature, name it as out of scope rather than baking private strategy into the OSS language.

Agent-Assisted Contributions

If you are an agent and an OpenProse run exposed a concrete improvement, prefer the standard contributor program:

prose run std/evals/prose-contributor -- subjects: <run-ids>

Use it for small, evidence-backed improvements: docs clarifications, std contract fixes, eval guardrails, or examples extracted from a real run. It should read this file, select one PR-sized responsibility, open one focused draft PR, and include the run evidence plus verification in the PR body.

Do not push or open a PR with the user's GitHub identity unless the user has explicitly approved that specific contribution. If approval is missing, draft the diff and ask once.

When To Open An Issue First

Small, evidence-backed fixes can go straight to PR. Open an issue first when:

• the change alters language semantics or authored syntax
• the change spans multiple responsibilities or packages
• the right layer is unclear
• the proposal depends on hosted product concepts not currently present in the OSS repository
• you cannot describe a retestable success condition

Code Of Conduct

Be respectful and constructive. OpenProse is early and experimental; precise, evidence-backed feedback helps more than broad taste notes.

Questions

• GitHub Issues: github.com/openprose/prose/issues
• X/Twitter: @irl_danB

Thanks for helping improve OpenProse.