V Vant Docs

Contributing to Vant

Welcome! Here’s how to help make Vant better.

Canonical source note: this page is the ONE full contribution guide. The root CONTRIBUTING.md is the short front door pointing here; do not grow the two back into divergent copies of each other.

Code of Conduct

Be respectful. We’re all here to build cool AI memory stuff together.

Ways to Contribute

There are several ways to contribute to Vant.

1. Report Bugs

Open an issue with:

2. Suggest Features

Open a discussion first:

Good First Issues

Issues labeled good first issue (the repo’s real label, with spaces) carry a contract: a reproduction and an acceptance test sit in the issue body, so you verify your fix the same way the project does. It is the same contract every vant fix follows - the fix ships with the test that proves it. Browse the current set on the issues page.

Triage Doors

Every kind of input has a real door, and the doors are checked against reality:

Input Door What to include
Question or idea Discussions What you tried, what you expected
Bug Issues with the bug template Expected, actual, reproduction, environment
Feature request Discussions first The problem and proposed shape; becomes an issue once concrete
Security vulnerability Private advisory - never a public issue Impact, reproduction, which surface
Documentation gap Issues with the documentation label The page, the claim, what reality says

Labels that exist on the tracker: bug, documentation, enhancement, good first issue, help wanted, question, plus project tags (announcement, exploration, roadmap, testing, api, encryption, recursion, nova). If a guide mentions a label that does not exist, that is a bug: the doors are part of the surface.

Security handling is credited and private per the project’s security policy; support routing lives in SUPPORT.md.

3. Write Code

Contribute code to the project.

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a branch: git checkout -b feature/your-feature
3. Make changes
4. Add tests if applicable
5. Commit: git commit -m 'Add feature'
6. Push: git push origin feature/your-feature
7. Open a PR

4. Improve Docs

Docs live in docs/. Just edit and PR!

Two lint gates run over every docs change, so run them before you push:

# Voice/format gate: fence language tags, heading order, em dashes,
# emoji in prose, pipe-table shape, trailing whitespace
npm run lint:docs

Both scripts live in scripts/ and pass silently when clean:

# Style gate only
node scripts/check-docs-style.js

# Link gate only: every internal link must resolve to a real page
node scripts/check-docs-links.js

Content rules in short:

5. Share

Development Setup

Get your local development environment ready.

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/dhaupin/vant.git
cd vant

# Install deps
npm install

# Test
npm test

# Run locally
node bin/vant.js

Coding Standards

Commit Messages

Format: type: description (this is the canonical commit format; agent-crew work on agent-<name> branches uses the agent-name: did thing X pass format instead. Both are documented, neither is accidental)

Types:

Examples:

feat: Add multi-agent lock timeout
fix: Handle missing brain repo gracefully
docs: Update CLI reference

PR Process

  1. Open early - Gets feedback quickly
  2. Keep small - Smaller = faster to review
  3. Respond to feedback - Iterate until merged

Recognition

Contributors get added to README. Thanks for making Vant better!

Questions?