Contributing

Tela is an early-stage project moving fast. Contributions are welcome, but the bar is real: the code base has a "no cruft, no backward compatibility until 1.0" policy that drives a lot of the decisions, and PRs need to land clean (build, vet, gofmt, race-clean tests, no stray files).

Setting Up a Dev Environment

git clone https://github.com/paulmooreparks/tela
cd tela
go build ./...
go vet ./...
go test ./...
gofmt -l .          # should print nothing

Continuous integration also enforces per-package test coverage floors on the security-critical packages; go test ./... passing locally is the main signal, and the coverage gate output in CI tells you exactly which package regressed if it trips.

For TelaVisor specifically:

cd cmd/telagui
wails build         # outputs to ./build/bin/

You will need Wails v2 installed.

What to Read First

  • CLAUDE.md: the project's guiding principles, coding conventions, API style, and the list of architectural review items
  • Why a Connectivity Fabric: the design rationale for the core architecture
  • ROADMAP-1.0.md: the 1.0 readiness checklist (anything unticked is fair game)
  • STATUS.md: the traceability matrix from design sections to implementation

Filing Issues

Use the GitHub issue tracker. For security issues, follow SECURITY.md rather than filing a public issue.

Pre-1.0 Ground Rules

  • No backward-compatibility shims. If a name or shape is wrong, fix it everywhere in one commit.
  • Delete duplicate code paths. When a new shape replaces an old one, the old one goes in the same change.
  • No "deprecated" markings yet. Pre-1.0 there is no deprecation; there is only the right shape and the wrong shape.

After 1.0, the rules invert: deprecation will be slow and deliberate, and backward compatibility will be maintained religiously. Anything left in the tree at 1.0 becomes a permanent maintenance burden, so we cut aggressively now.