# Contributing to Perspicacite-AI

Thank you for your interest in contributing.

For architecture and development workflow details, see the project documentation.

## Licensing and Contributor Agreement

This repository is publicly distributed under the Apache License 2.0.

All non-trivial external contributions require a signed short Individual Contributor Agreement before they can be merged. If a contribution is made in the course of employment or under institutional intellectual-property rules, maintainers may also request the optional Employer / Institutional Authorization.

By submitting a contribution, you confirm that you have the legal right to submit it and that the contribution is intended for inclusion in the Apache License 2.0 codebase.

Accepted contributions are merged into the public Apache License 2.0 repository. The contribution process is intended to confirm submission authority and Apache compatibility; it does not require copyright assignment.

If you are contributing in the course of employment or on behalf of an institution/company, please contact the maintainers before (or when) opening a pull request.

## CLA Workflow in Pull Requests

- Non-trivial external pull requests require the short Individual Contributor Agreement before merge.
- The optional Employer / Institutional Authorization is requested only when maintainers need confirmation from an employer or institution.
- The CLA Assistant Lite workflow prompts contributors for the individual agreement directly in the PR thread/checks.
- The `CLA Check` status check must pass before merge.
- Contact: See project maintainers for inquiries.
