Contributing

Contribution workflow, code quality, and pull request guidelines.

Thanks for contributing to Crona.

Before You Start

Read concepts.md for the product model.
Read development.md for build and test workflows.
Read socket-api.md if your change touches local daemon IPC.
Check release.md and the current changelog before starting larger release-facing work.

Keep changes local-first and local-daemon-centric.
Preserve the current command/repository and daemon/client ownership boundaries unless there is a strong reason to change them.
Prefer small focused refactors over broad rewrites.
Keep docs and tests in sync with behavioral changes.
Avoid introducing wrapper-only files or dead abstraction layers.

Add or update tests for meaningful behavior changes.
Keep higher-level TUI behavior checks in the TUI testsuite, and keep pure helper/parser tests local to the owning package.
Use make ci before release-facing changes.
Use make test-e2e when touching local daemon IPC startup, shutdown, runtime paths, or protocol behavior.
Preserve public JSON and IPC contracts unless the change is intentional and documented.
Prefer clear, low-risk decomposition over framework-style rewrites.

Explain the user-visible outcome first.
Call out protocol, storage, updater, or installer risk explicitly.
Note any tests you ran.
If a change defers or drops an earlier approach, update the docs so the repository does not advertise stale direction.