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veritas-kanban/CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributing to Veritas Kanban

Thanks for your interest in contributing! This guide will help you get started.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 22 or later
  • pnpm 11+ (package manager)

Development Setup

  1. Fork the repository on GitHub

  2. Clone your fork:

    git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/veritas-kanban.git
cd veritas-kanban

  3. Install dependencies:

    pnpm install

  4. Set up environment variables:

    cp server/.env.example server/.env

    Edit server/.env with your local configuration (at minimum, set VERITAS_ADMIN_KEY).

  5. Start the development server:

    pnpm dev

    The board auto-seeds with example tasks on first run. To re-seed manually: pnpm seed.

Project Structure

Veritas Kanban is a monorepo:

veritas-kanban/
├── server/     # Backend API (Express + TypeScript)
├── web/        # Frontend UI (React + Vite + TypeScript)
├── shared/     # Shared types & contracts
├── cli/        # `vk` CLI tool
├── mcp/        # MCP server for AI assistants
├── tasks/      # Task storage (Markdown files, gitignored)
│   ├── active/     # Current tasks (your data, not tracked)
│   ├── archive/    # Archived tasks (not tracked)
│   └── examples/   # Seed tasks for first-run
├── scripts/    # Build and utility scripts
└── docs/       # Documentation

Note: Your task data (tasks/active/, tasks/archive/) is .gitignored and never committed. Only tasks/examples/ (seed data) is tracked.

Development Workflow

Creating a Feature Branch

  1. Create a feature branch from main:

    git checkout -b feat/my-feature

  2. Make your changes — write code, add tests, update docs.

  3. Run touched-package type checking and changed-file linting before committing. Ordinary implementation pull requests do not run workspace tests:

    pnpm --filter @veritas-kanban/server typecheck
pnpm exec eslint server/src/path/to/changed.ts

    At an explicitly declared focused diagnostic milestone, use direct exec vitest run invocation for one exact-file slice. Do not use pnpm --filter <package> test -- <test-files> or pnpm --filter <package> test -- --run <test-files> as a focused command. Package wrappers can ignore that file boundary and expand into the entire package suite.

    Build @veritas-kanban/shared first and type-check its known consumers when a shared contract changes. Use pnpm test at an explicit integration, critical-security, or release milestone, or when a maintainer explicitly selects the ci:full gate. Critical coverage, E2E, desktop packaging, and Docker contracts follow the same milestone boundary.

  4. Commit using conventional commits.

  5. Push to your fork and open a pull request.

Scope and Verification Budget

This cadence extends the deterministic CI selector delivered in #1000.

  • Keep one independently shippable behavior per issue and pull request.
  • Split separable UI work, secondary integrations, refactors, and additional hardening into linked follow-up issues before implementing them.
  • Re-scope when a second unexpected subsystem becomes necessary or the verification effort becomes larger than the changed behavior.
  • Do not rerun an unchanged passing check after documentation, comments, or formatting-only edits.
  • Treat Select Test Scope as the CI authority. Ordinary pull requests and main pushes select no workspace tests; manual focused diagnostics and full milestone selections are recorded in the job summary.
  • Do not wait for optional desktop artifacts, packaging previews, or release workflows unless the pull request changes that product boundary.
  • Test the behavior and meaningful failure modes. Do not use raw test count as a quality measure.
  • The dependency-free delivery cadence checker guards these rules in pre-commit and the early CI scope-control job without installing packages or running workspace tests.

Branch Merge Protocol

When merging multiple feature branches, merge one at a time so the next branch can rebase on the exact result.

Process:

  1. Merge first branch to main
  2. Confirm the required GitHub checks for that pull request
  3. Rebase the next branch on the updated main
  4. Inspect conflict resolution and run changed-file static checks
  5. Merge the next branch

The complete workspace suite, coverage, integration, E2E, desktop artifact, and Docker gates run once at the declared milestone. They are not repeated after every unrelated merge.

Why: Sequential merges keep conflicts attributable without paying the release-certification cost after every independent change. The declared milestone verifies the integrated candidate once.

One Agent Per File Rule

Critical: Only one agent (human or AI) should edit a file at a time. Never assign multiple agents to modify the same file concurrently.

Why: When multiple agents edit the same file independently, each change stomps on the others. Even if each change is correct in isolation, they create conflicts and break functionality when combined. This applies to both human and AI contributors.

Process:

  1. Assign one agent to a file or task
  2. That agent completes their work and confirms they're done
  3. Only then can another agent touch that file
  4. If a task requires changes across multiple files, one agent owns the full task

This is a hard constraint, not a guideline. It's the file-level equivalent of sequential branch merges.

Squad Chat Protocol (Mandatory)

Every agent (human or AI) must post to squad chat when starting work, hitting milestones, completing tasks, or finding issues. Squad chat is the glass box — real-time visibility into what's happening.

# Regular messages (agents post these):
./scripts/squad-post.sh --model claude-sonnet-4.5 AGENT_NAME "Your update" tag1 tag2

# System events (orchestrator posts these):
./scripts/squad-event.sh --model claude-sonnet-4.5 spawned AGENT_NAME "Task Title"
./scripts/squad-event.sh completed AGENT_NAME "Task Title" "2m35s"

# Or curl directly:
curl -s -X POST "http://localhost:3001/api/chat/squad" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"agent":"AGENT_NAME","message":"Your update","tags":["tag1"],"model":"claude-sonnet-4.5"}'

The --model flag is optional but recommended — it shows which AI model is behind each agent in the UI. System events (spawned, completed, failed) render as divider lines in the squad chat panel.

See SQUAD-CHAT-PROTOCOL.md for full details.

Risk-Proportional Review

Review the changed behavior once before committing. In that pass, cover correctness and any security, reliability, performance, accessibility, or architecture risks that actually apply to the change.

Do not create separate review tasks for inapplicable categories or require numeric review scores. If the review finds an unsafe behavior, fix it and recheck the affected path before committing. Independent or cross-model review is optional unless a configured governance policy, issue owner, or release owner explicitly requires it.

Pre-Merge Checklist

Before merging, verify the checks selected for the changed product boundary:

  • Selected CI tier: Every required check started for the pull request is green.
  • Implementation evidence: The diff and applicable static checks support the changed behavior.
  • Shared contracts, when changed: New types are exported and known consumers type-check.
  • Configuration, when changed: Ports, URLs, timeouts, environment variables, CSP, and CORS behave in the affected modes.
  • Frontend integration, when changed: HTTP calls use shared helpers and location-sensitive behavior avoids hardcoded hosts.
  • Milestone gate, when selected: Complete build, typecheck, test, security, integration, E2E, or artifact checks required by ci:full or the release plan pass once.

Environment Rules

Never change these without team agreement:

  • PORT in .env: Server default is 3001. Changing this breaks CLI/API workflows and bookmarks.
  • CORS_ORIGINS: Must include the production serving origin (e.g., http://localhost:3000 when Express serves the built frontend in production mode).
  • CSP connect-src: Must allow WebSocket connections in all modes (dev, production, test). Don't hide WebSocket support behind isDev checks.
  • Configurable values: Use environment variables with sensible defaults. No magic numbers in code.

Rule of thumb: If changing a value would break someone else's local setup, it belongs in an environment variable with documentation.

Testing Requirements

Run browser or API smoke tests only at an explicit integration or release milestone when the change affects that product boundary. Choose the smallest runtime check that proves the behavior:

  • Server or API changes: Exercise the changed endpoint and its meaningful auth or failure path. Add a health check only when startup or routing changed.
  • Web changes: Open the changed route and verify its primary interaction, keyboard flow, and failure state.
  • Realtime changes: Verify the changed event path with the minimum number of clients needed to prove propagation.
  • Desktop changes: Use the relevant desktop readiness or packaging smoke check.
  • Documentation and static tooling: No runtime smoke is required unless deterministic CI escalates the change.

Static review does not replace runtime evidence when runtime behavior changed, but unrelated browser, CRUD, WebSocket, or packaging checks add no useful confidence to a focused change.

Common Integration Failures

These have broken production. Check for them:

  • Missing type exports: Types added to shared/ but not exported in barrel file
  • Hardcoded ports/URLs: Frontend code assuming specific port instead of using window.location
  • CORS origin mismatches: Dev-only origins in allowlist, production origin missing
  • CSP dev-only exceptions: Security policies that only work in development mode
  • Response envelope mismatches: API clients expecting raw JSON but server returns wrapped { data, error } responses
  • Conflicting processes: Vite dev server running on production port

Commit Conventions

We follow Conventional Commits.

Format

<type>[optional scope]: <description>

[optional body]

[optional footer(s)]

Types

Type Description
feat A new feature
fix A bug fix
docs Documentation changes
style Code style (formatting, semicolons, etc.)
refactor Code change that doesn't fix a bug or add a feature
perf Performance improvement
test Adding or updating tests
build Build system or dependency changes
ci CI/CD configuration changes
chore Other changes (no src or test modification)

Examples

feat(board): add drag-and-drop column reordering
fix(api): handle empty task list in export endpoint
docs: update README with deployment instructions

Pull Request Process

  1. Fork the repo and create your branch from main.
  2. Branch naming: Use descriptive names like feat/task-filters, fix/login-redirect, docs/api-reference.
  3. Open a PR against main.
  4. Fill out the PR template — describe changes, link related issues, include screenshots for UI changes.
  5. Ensure the selected PR CI tier passes — all checks started for the pull request must be green. The scope selector records affected workspaces but defers their tests on ordinary pull requests. Use ci:full for release candidates, critical integration/security boundaries, or other changes that require an explicit complete-suite gate.
  6. Request review — a maintainer will review and may request changes.
  7. Address feedback — push additional commits as needed.
  8. Merge — once approved, a maintainer will merge.

Code Style

  • Language: TypeScript (strict mode)
  • Linting: ESLint — pnpm lint
  • Lint budget: pnpm lint:budget enforces the current warning ceiling so lint debt cannot grow.
  • Formatting: Prettier — pnpm format
  • Editor: VS Code recommended with ESLint + Prettier extensions

Follow the existing conventions in .eslintrc.*, .prettierrc, and tsconfig.json.

Testing

  • Run all tests:

    pnpm test

    This is the canonical unit gate. It builds the shared package, then runs the server, web, CLI, and MCP suites sequentially with at most four Vitest workers per project. The final line reports PASS, FAIL, or NOT RUN for every workspace.

  • End-to-end tests use Playwright:

    pnpm test:e2e

    Playwright does not retry failures. Screenshots and traces from the first failure are retained in test-results/ and uploaded by Scheduled QA.

  • Load smoke tests use k6:

    pnpm test:load:smoke

  • Release readiness checks workspace versions, changelog, README badge, build outputs, and optional GitHub tag/release state:

    pnpm validate:release
pnpm validate:release -- --github

  • Write tests for new features and bug fixes.

  • Ensure existing tests pass before submitting.

CI tiers

Trigger Stable checks Scope
Documentation-only pull request or merge Static gates; test jobs record skip decisions No workspace tests
Ordinary code pull request or merge to main Lint & Type Check, Build, Security Audit, scope recording No workspace tests or coverage; affected packages remain visible
Pull request with ci:full Default checks plus every milestone test and artifact gate Complete unit, coverage, desktop, Docker, and applicable integration gates
Nightly 08:00 UTC or manual CI dispatch with test_scope=full Static gates plus complete workspace and coverage gates Authoritative recurring or operator-selected milestone
Manual CI dispatch with test_scope=focused and optional base_sha Static gates plus Changed Tests Explicit diagnostic slice for affected workspaces; no coverage ratchet
Manual Desktop Artifacts or Docker Image Contract dispatch Selected artifact or container contract Explicit operator milestone outside a pull request

Select Test Scope is the decision record for each run. Its summary names the event, exact base/head range, changed-path count, selected tier, affected workspaces, and why Changed Tests or Workspace Unit Tests ran or skipped. Shared contracts, package manifests, lockfiles, storage implementations, desktop source, and known-workspace deletions are recorded as affected workspaces without launching tests. Build and typecheck remain whole-repository gates on every ordinary code pull request. The full workspace suite and release-grade artifact gates run at scheduled, explicit ci:full, critical integration/security, and release milestones.

Run the selector contract locally with:

pnpm test:ci-scope

Release validation remains the final authority: clean-clone build, full unit and integration suites, applicable E2E, and signed artifact verification.

The operational target for the default pull-request tier is under 10 minutes, with no workspace tests, coverage, or desktop/container packaging. This is a target rather than an SLA; dependency installation and hosted-runner availability still vary. Behavior changes should include coverage that the next declared milestone can exercise.

Optional Desktop Artifacts, packaging previews, and release workflows are not merge blockers outside their path boundary. If one starts without providing evidence required by the pull request, continue based on required checks; maintainers may cancel the redundant run.

Questions?

Open a GitHub Discussion or reach out to the maintainers.

Thanks for contributing! 🎉