Contributing

Developer-facing documentation for working on DialogueDown itself — its architecture, the reasoning behind each compiler stage, and how to get set up.

Start here

• Contribution guide — how to report issues, develop, test, and open pull requests.
• Code of conduct and security policy.
• How this project is tested — the kinds of test here, what each one is for, and which to write. Worth reading before your first test.

Understand the design

• Design notes — one note per component and compiler stage (the Markdown front-end, the transpiler, desugaring, the visualization, the CLI, and more), each recording the goal, key decisions, and tradeoffs.
• API reference — the generated C# API, useful when reading or extending the library.

The compiler pipeline

A script is lowered through distinct stages — parse, transpile, desugar, validate, analyze, build the graph, then write a playbook a runtime plays. The pipeline diagram links each stage to its design note; reading the notes in that order is the fastest way to learn how the compiler fits together.

Enforced architecture boundaries

The dependency direction between projects and between core layers is enforced by architecture tests that fail the build when a change breaks it. The rules, and how to extend them, are in How this project is tested.