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Contributing Guidelines
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Thank you for considering a contribution to the **Erbsland Configuration Parser for Python**!  
We truly appreciate your time and effort, and we’re excited to collaborate with you.  

Code of Conduct
===============

By contributing to this project, you agree to follow our :doc:`Code of Conduct <code-of-conduct>`.  
Please take a moment to read it—it helps us maintain a **welcoming, respectful, and inclusive community** for everyone.

.. button-ref:: code-of-conduct
    :ref-type: doc
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    Read the Code of Conduct →

How You Can Contribute
======================

We welcome contributions of all kinds. Here are a few ways to get involved:

* **Found a bug?** Please `open an issue <https://github.com/erbsland-dev/erbsland-py-conf/issues/new>`_ to let us know.  
* **Have a feature request?** We’d love to hear your ideas—just `open an issue <https://github.com/erbsland-dev/erbsland-py-conf/issues/new>`_.  
* **Have a question?** Feel free to `start a discussion <https://github.com/erbsland-dev/erbsland-py-conf/discussions>`_. We’re glad to help!  

Even small contributions, such as improving documentation, fixing typos, or clarifying error messages, are valuable and appreciated.  

Pull Requests
=============

We encourage pull requests, but to avoid duplicate work and make sure we’re aligned, please **reach out first** by:  

* starting a `discussion <https://github.com/erbsland-dev/erbsland-py-conf/discussions>`_, or  
* `opening an issue <https://github.com/erbsland-dev/erbsland-py-conf/issues/new>`_.  

This helps us review your idea early and ensure your contribution fits well into the project’s direction.  

Before submitting, please also review:  

* :doc:`code-style` for our Python coding conventions.  
* :doc:`write-a-unittest` for writing and running tests.  

Well-tested, clean, and documented contributions have the best chance of being merged quickly.  

About the Use of Artificial Intelligence
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We value contributions that are thoughtfully crafted by humans.  
Using tools to improve clarity or catch mistakes is perfectly fine, but **all contributions must be reviewed and validated by you before submission**.  

To keep the project safe and maintainable:  

* We regularly scan the codebase for vulnerabilities and similar issues with automated tools.  
* Automatically generated issues or pull requests **without meaningful human input** will not be accepted.  

Our goal is to keep this project reliable, transparent, and easy to contribute to—for everyone.