cast/CONTRIBUTING.md
dan-claude-bot ee723c1126 docs(contributing): document the blocker axis and merge-next ownership
The who-sets-what table is the day-to-day answer to "can I move this by
hand", and it never mentioned blocker:* -- a whole machine-owned family
added when state:needs-rebase was retired. merge-next was missing too, and
that is the one label whose ownership actually needs saying, because it is
the only one in the machine's vocabulary the machine deliberately does not
set.

Step 6 also read as though requesting the maintainer is sufficient to flip
state:needs-human. It is not: needs-human requires zero blockers, so the
request does nothing on a conflicted or red PR.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-20 18:40:12 +00:00

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# Contributing
How change lands in this repo. The short version: PRs are born as drafts,
three reviewer bots take the first rounds, a human takes the last word — and
labels tell you where everything is without opening anything.
## The PR loop
1. **Fork and branch.** Contributors work from forks; upstream branches are
for maintainers. Title the PR conventionally (`feat:`, `fix:`, `docs:`).
2. **Open as a draft** while you build. Drafts are invisible to the reviewer
bots on purpose.
3. **When it's ready**: mark ready-for-review and request all three bots —
`claude-bot-andresmgsl`, `codex-bot-andresmgsl`, `grok-bot-andresmgsl`.
They poll roughly every 15 minutes.
4. **Rounds are answered whole.** Wait until all three have reviewed, then
answer the entire round in a **single reply**, push the fixes, and
re-request the bots that didn't approve. Prefer verification over
argument: a test settles what a comment thread can't.
5. **Reviews end in a verdict.** A reviewer — bot or human — either
**approves** or **requests changes**, never a bare comment. A
comment-only review is a non-verdict: it doesn't say whether the round
passed, and the state machine (and anyone scanning the board) has to
guess. The verdict carries *blockingness only*, the body carries the
feedback: non-blocking nits ride an **approval** and the author addresses
them at their discretion; anything blocking — including a question that
gates the verdict — is **request changes**, saying what unblocks it. The
reconciler treats a comment-only review as not-approved, so commenting
without a verdict only stalls the PR. The machine never reads review
bodies: when a comment-only reviewer's line is really an agreement, that
judgment belongs to the **author** — escalate by requesting the
maintainer's review (step 6), and the reconciler flips the label on that
request, because an explicit request is a fact it can trust.
6. **When the round passes, the author hands the PR to the maintainer** by
requesting their review — that request is what flips `state:needs-human`,
provided the PR carries **no `blocker:*` label**. A blocker means the work
is still yours whatever the round said, so a request on a conflicted or red
PR will not flip it. With three formal head-current approvals the labels
workflow requests the maintainer automatically; when part of the panel is
comment-only, reading their agreement is the author's judgment, so the
author makes the request.
7. **Checks must be green**: `npm run check`, `npm run build`, and
`npm test` locally mirror what CI runs.
8. **Feature PRs land their changelog entry as part of the PR** (box's
convention): add it under `CHANGELOG.md`'s `## Unreleased` heading —
that section becomes the release notes verbatim when a release is cut.
## Releasing
A release is a PR, and merging it IS the release
([#111](https://github.com/heavy-duty/cast/issues/111); box#96's design,
on box#83's shape):
1. A small PR — `release: X.Y.Z`, labeled `release` — bumps `package.json`'s
`version` (and `package-lock.json`; `npm install --package-lock-only`
keeps them in step) and stamps `CHANGELOG.md`'s Unreleased section as
`## X.Y.Z — YYYY-MM-DD`. **Then re-arm: add a fresh, empty
`## Unreleased` immediately above the section you just stamped.** The
same PR, the same diff — stamping without re-arming leaves main with no
`## Unreleased`, and the next PR that was authored before the release
and merged after has its entry land *inside the shipped section*, which
git does cleanly, with no conflict to warn anyone
(heavy-duty/rig#66 — it happened there). `test/release.test.ts` keys
this to the version, and checks both halves of the stamp:
- while `package.json` is bare, the top section may be the stamp or the
re-armed `## Unreleased`, but a `## X.Y.Z` section for the version you
are shipping **must exist and extract non-empty** — a bump without a
stamp is red here rather than after the merge, in release.yml;
- the moment step 3's `-dev` bump lands, the top section must be
`## Unreleased` or CI is red.
The empty `## Unreleased` this step adds is deliberately tolerated: what
must extract non-empty is the section that SHIPS, not the top one. CI
green on it, same loop as any PR.
2. **Merge. That's the ship decision — nothing else to do.**
[release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml) fires on the merged,
`release`-labeled PR and asserts, in order, each fail-loud and creating
nothing: the merged version is non-`-dev`; the version *changed in this
PR* (the `-dev` transition is the interlock — a mislabeled ordinary PR
fails here); that version's changelog section extracts non-empty
([.github/scripts/release-notes.sh](.github/scripts/release-notes.sh));
and no tag or release exists for it yet. Then, in the same job, it tags
the merge commit bare `X.Y.Z` (no `v` prefix — box's tag scheme), builds
the package once (`npm ci && npm run build && npm prune --omit=dev`), and
publishes the release with the runnable tree — `bin/`, `dist/`,
production `node_modules/`, `package.json` — attached as
`cast-X.Y.Z.tgz`. That asset is what the installer's release channels
download: the build happens once, in CI, never on an operator's machine.
*Manual fallback and backfill:* push a bare `X.Y.Z` tag on the merge
commit yourself — the same workflow runs the same asserts, build, and
publish from the tag.
3. **The release re-arms main itself**: the same workflow run bumps
`package.json` (and `package-lock.json`) to `X.Y.(Z+1)-dev` and pushes
the commit straight to main — no follow-up PR (it opens one only if
branch protection refuses the direct push, and says so loudly).
Installs are versioned by the tree's `package.json` version, so a
`CAST_REF=main` install between releases must land as
`versions/X.Y.(Z+1)-dev`, never as `versions/X.Y.Z` — main's tree must
not impersonate the release it merely descends from. On the *manual*
tag path the bump stays yours: open the one-line PR after publishing.
This step re-arms the **version** only — the `## Unreleased` heading is
step 1's, in the ceremony PR's own diff, because no workflow ever writes
`CHANGELOG.md`. The two halves meet in `test/release.test.ts`: once this
bump makes the version `-dev`, a missing `## Unreleased` is CI-red.
## Labels — who sets what
The full taxonomy lives in [LABELS.md](LABELS.md). What matters day to day is
who sets each kind — most of it is machinery, and hand-moving a
machine-owned label just gets corrected on the next pass:
| Labels | Set by |
|---|---|
| `state:*` | the labels workflow ([.github/workflows/labels.yml](.github/workflows/labels.yml)) — recomputed from GitHub's own facts every 15 minutes and on PR events. Never by hand. Exactly one per PR: *whose ball is it.* |
| `blocker:*` | the same workflow, from the same facts — *what is in the way.* Any number per PR, or none. Never by hand: applying one does not stop a merge, and removing one does not unblock anything. Fix the thing and the next sweep drops the label. |
| `stale` | the same workflow — 48h without commits, comments, or reviews. `blocked` PRs are exempt: they are quiet legitimately. |
| `scope:*` on PRs | actions/labeler, from the changed paths ([.github/labeler.yml](.github/labeler.yml)). Additive — you may add more, the machine won't remove them. |
| `scope:*` on issues | you, when opening or triaging — issues have no paths to derive from. |
| `blocked`, `release` | you — automation never guesses intent. |
| `merge-next` | you or the agent owning the queue. Which PR lands first is a judgement about how they conflict, so the workflow never sets it — it only **clears** it, the moment the PR stops being something a human could merge. |
| `bug` / `enhancement` / `documentation` | you, on issues only — a PR's type already lives in its title. |
## Issues
Give issues the same care as PR titles: say the surface in the title, apply a
`scope:` label and a type label (`bug` / `enhancement` / `documentation`) when
you open one, and `blocked` when it waits on something — that is what keeps
the board navigable as the issue count grows.