Contributing

Zentinelle is MIT-licensed and we welcome contributions.

Areas where help is needed

High priority

• Data pipeline -- token counting, cost estimation, latency measurement from real agent activity (#68, #70-#76)
• Dynamic model catalog -- fetch model lists from providers instead of hardcoding (#66)
• Integration tests -- real end-to-end tests per agent SDK (#77)

Medium priority

• Accessibility -- keyboard navigation, focus visibility, WCAG AA compliance (#59-#65)
• Agent integrations -- hooks/proxy for more coding agents
• Knowledge graph -- auto-update on commits, codebase navigation (#67)

Always welcome

• Bug reports with reproduction steps
• Documentation improvements
• UI/UX feedback

Development setup

git clone https://github.com/calliopeai/zentinelle
cd zentinelle
docker compose up -d

# Backend (Django)
cd backend
pipenv install
pipenv run python manage.py migrate --database=zentinelle
pipenv run python manage.py migrate
pipenv run pytest

# Frontend (Next.js)
cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Pre-commit checklist

Run before every backend commit:

cd backend

# 1. Django startup check
pipenv run python -c "import django, os; os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'config.settings'); django.setup()"

# 2. Migration check
pipenv run python manage.py makemigrations --check --dry-run

# 3. Tests
pipenv run pytest

# 4. Lint
pipenv run ruff check

Git practices

• Commit directly to main
• No rebasing, no force-push
• No co-authorship messages
• Imperative mood commit messages

Project structure

See Knowledge Graph for the full codebase map and data flows.

See Tech Stack for technology choices.

See Methodology Primer for how we work.