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This is the starting point for contributing to Limen itself. Use it to find the right maintenance path before you change code, docs, or release metadata.

For cross-product Vaquum process and organization-wide norms, see the external Vaquum Developer Docs. Release process and versioning guidance now also live there. Use the pages below for Limen-specific contribution and maintenance rules that still belong in this repo.

Read This First​

Before opening or updating a Limen PR:

  • read the relevant Limen page for the task you are doing
  • check the repo PR template and satisfy every applicable item
  • update docs, changelog, tests, and version metadata when the change requires it

Route By Task​

If you are doing thisRead this nextWhy
changing docs structure, navigation, or page rolesDocumentation System ContractDefines the docs architecture, page types, site model, and rewrite rules.
updating or adding public functions, classes, or modulesWriting DocstringsDefines Limen's docstring expectations and the repo's current house style.
adding a new foundational experiment templateContributing Foundational SFDsCovers research expectations, file ownership, and review criteria for foundational SFDs.
preparing a release or checking release automationMaking a ReleaseUses the shared Vaquum release process that the Limen release script now fetches directly.
deciding how to bump the versionSemantic VersioningUses the shared Vaquum versioning guidance rather than a repo-local copy.

Common Contributor Workflow​

  1. Understand the affected subsystem and read the canonical page for it.
  2. Make the code change, doc change, or release metadata change together when they belong together.
  3. Run the relevant validation locally.
  4. Review the full GitHub diff yourself before requesting review.
  5. Make sure the PR template items are genuinely true, not just checked.

Test Runtime Budget​

  • PR Validation now publishes a test-runtime-profile artifact from the canonical python -m coverage run -m tests.run path.
  • PR Checks Runtime enforces the suite ceiling committed in tests/runtime_budget.json.
  • Update tests/runtime_budget.json only when recent green main CI runs show a real new baseline, and keep that evidence in the linked issue or PR.
  • Do not raise the budget to absorb avoidable slow tests; everything executed through tests/run.py is timed automatically.

Scope Notes​

  • /docs is the canonical public docs layer.
  • /docs/Developer is the canonical Limen contributor layer.
  • package READMEs under /limen are orientation pages, not the main contributor process docs.