# Collector Authoring Checklist

CRITICAL: Never write raw sensitive data to durable artifacts. This includes passwords, API keys, bearer tokens, SNMP communities, private keys, connection strings with embedded credentials, session cookies, community member names, customer names, customer identifiers, personal data, non-private IP addresses that can identify customers, private endpoints, account IDs, and proprietary incident details.

This file is a quick landing page for humans and AI assistants contributing to the IBM.d plugin. For the full documentation follow these links:

- [Plugin overview & build instructions](README.md)
- [IBM.D framework internals](framework/README.md)
- [Go collector best practices](BEST-PRACTICES.md)

When implementing or modifying a collector:

1. Read the framework guide to understand contexts, generators, and the module layout.
2. Keep `contexts.yaml`, `config.go`, metadata, schema, README, and health alerts synchronized by running `go generate`.
3. Use conservative defaults – configuration always overrides auto-detection.
4. Log clearly, avoid spamming, and never fabricate metric values.
5. Verify with `ibm.d.plugin --dump` before sending a pull request.

That’s it! Dive into the module directories for concrete examples.
