cowork-local/START_CONTRIBUTING.md

Start Contributing

What is this repository?

Cowork Local is the Cowork Team's product/platform repository: desktop runtime, UI/UX, workspaces, agents, MCP/connectors, security, and reusable platform foundations.

The Cowork Team owns architecture, product behavior, releases, the stable branch, final review, and merge. The FSG AI Core Team is a contributor for selected generic capabilities such as MCP integration, agent capabilities, orchestration/model-routing tests, evaluation/security integration, and reusable platform improvements.

Where are Core AI tasks?

Use fsg-ai-core-assets Issues/Project as the Core AI task source of truth. Pick and assign a contribution task there, then move it to In Progress.

Do not copy the Core AI backlog, golden datasets, CASAN assets, agent catalog, or evaluation repository into Cowork Local. Only source/artifacts required by an agreed Cowork runtime contract belong here.

Make the change

Create a focused branch:

git switch -c core-ai/TL-xxx-short-name

For Cowork-native work use feat/, fix/, test/, docs/, perf/, or refactor/. Keep one logical change in one Pull Request.

Run the application from the parent directory with python -m cowork_local. Run the current automated test suite from this repository with:

python -m pip install -r requirements-test.txt
python -m pytest tests -q

Use environment variables for credentials; never commit .env, ~/.cowork_local/, logs, customer data, or generated runtime files.

Review and completion

Before opening a Pull Request, obtain Core AI pre-review and move the Core task to Review. Open the Pull Request in Cowork Local with the Core repository URL, issue, task ID, scope, validation evidence, and security impact. Then move the Core task to Upstream Review.

The Cowork Team may request changes or approve and merge. A Core AI task is Done only after the Cowork Pull Request is merged—not when implementation or Core AI review finishes. Record the Pull Request and merge reference in the Core issue.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for conventions and docs/governance/ for ownership, review, and Definition of Done.