Contribute — start here¶

This project is open source (MIT) and built to be pushed forward by a crowd, not one person. The fastest way in is data and content — most of it needs no knowledge of the engine, can't break the core, and lands in an afternoon. Pick one, send a PR.

One rule: extract or compile, never invent. Every value you add must trace to a real source — a published rate, a real building, a real product. No made-up numbers.

Good first issues — pick one¶

#	Contribution	What to do	Knowledge needed	Effort
1	Add a rate template	Copy an existing per-country rates JSON, swap in your jurisdiction's published unit rates (labour, material, equipment). We ship ~17 countries; the world has ~195.	Your local QS rates	hours
2	Add a test building	Drop any IFC into the viewer — it self-verifies through the Rosetta gates. Open a PR adding the file + the gate result. Each new building hardens the compiler.	None — just a file	minutes
3	Add a product catalog	Add `M_Product` rows for a region (real products, units of measure, prices) so BOM costing prices actual products, not generic IFC classes.	Product data	hours
4	Add a locale	We auto-detect 18 languages. Add the string file for one more.	Bilingual	hours
5	Add a format importer	One isolated importer per new mesh/BIM format. Well-bounded, can't touch the core.	JS + the format	1–2 days
6	Improve IFC export fidelity	Carry property sets / openings / type objects through export (a known, scoped code gap).	IFC + JS	a few days

Items 1–4 are the true low-hanging fruit: no core code, fully parallel, each one makes the tool more useful to the next contributor's country or format.

How to send a PR (the whole flow)¶

Fork the repo on GitHub and clone your fork.
Branch: git checkout -b add-<thing> (e.g. add-rate-template-india).
Make the change — one contribution per PR, kept small.
Prove it: if there's a witness for that area, run it and paste the § log line in your PR. For data (rates, buildings, catalogs), show it loading in the browser.
Open the PR with a one-line "what + source." Cite where the data came from.

That's it. No CLA, no ceremony. Small, sourced, witnessed.

What we especially want¶

Rate templates for any country not yet covered.
Real IFC buildings from any authoring tool — the more tools, the stronger the proof.
Bugs, broken edge cases, "this didn't work for my file" — open an issue with the file.
Translations for your language.

What to avoid¶

Invented data. No synthetic rates, fabricated products, or guessed geometry.
Big, sprawling PRs. One contribution at a time.
Touching deploy/live/ or the production snapshot.

For where the project is and where it's going, see StrategicIndustryPositioning.md (what's landed vs the frontier) and PROJECT_CHRONOLOGY.md (how it got here).