fish-config/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to fish-config

This is a personal dotfiles repo, but it's run with practices meant to scale to a team of contributors, not just one person's solo habits. This document formalizes those practices so they live somewhere durable instead of only in commit history and conversation memory. It will grow as the project does — treat it as a living document, not a final word.

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Issues
• Branching & Pull Requests
• Commit Conventions
• Fish Coding Standards
• Opinionated Components
• Documentation Pipeline
• Testing
• Secrets & Machine-Specific Config
• License

---

Getting Started

You'll need fish 4.x. Clone the repo and run the test suite to confirm your environment is sane:

fish tests/run-tests.fish

If you're touching anything under docs/manual/, you'll also want pandoc, python3-yaml, and Node 24+ to exercise the full doc-build pipeline locally (see Documentation Pipeline) — otherwise CI will catch problems on push.

Issues

Issues live on the Gitea repo. Three templates cover the common cases, each pre-applying its Kind/ label; blank issues stay enabled for everything else — a chore, a refactor, a question, a tracking issue.

Template	Format	Use it for	Applies
Bug report	web form	Something is broken or behaves unexpectedly	Kind/Bug
Feature or enhancement request	markdown	New functionality, or an improvement to what exists	Kind/Feature
Documentation issue	markdown	The manual, man page, config-help, or docs site is wrong, missing, or unclear	Kind/Documentation

They live in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/, next to the PR template, so the GitHub mirror offers the same set. The bug report is a Gitea issue form — a real web form with required fields — because a bug report missing its version, reproduction, or full error text can't be acted on, and a form refuses to submit without them. The other two are markdown templates in the same comment-guided style as .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md, since what they ask for is open-ended prose that structure would only get in the way of.

Issue titles

Issue titles are plain descriptions of the problem, not Conventional Commits subjects.

mv clobbers a symlink when the target exists            ← yes
fix(mv): prompt before replacing an existing symlink    ← no

An issue states a problem; a commit states a change. The type and scope that fix(mv): would carry are already on the issue as its Kind/ and Area/ labels, and the conventional subject belongs on the PR that closes it, where it becomes the commit message. Writing the fix into the title also presumes one, which is the wrong end to start from for anything still being diagnosed.

What an issue owes

• A bug needs a reproduction someone else can paste and run, starting from a fresh shell, plus the complete error output. A stale function definition in a long-lived session is the most common false alarm, so confirm it survives exec fish first. Status/Need More Info is where reports without a reproduction end up.
• A feature needs ## Acceptance criteria — the checkbox list of what must be true for the issue to close. It is the issue-side counterpart to a PR's ## Verification: a definition of done agreed before the work starts rather than argued about after, and the PR's checks usually grow out of it.
• A docs issue needs to name the docs/manual/** source, not just the page where the problem showed up. docs/fish-config.md and docs/fish-config.1 are generated, and a fix applied there is overwritten by the next CI run — see Documentation Pipeline.

Triage

Reporters aren't expected to label anything. Contributors without push access can't, and the templates apply the Kind/ label by themselves; the rest is the maintainer's job when the issue is triaged — add the Area/ label (the bug form's Area dropdown is how a reporter tells you, since no forge can map a form field to a label), set a Priority/ if it isn't ordinary, and apply Reviewed/Confirmed once a bug actually reproduces. See Labels.

When a PR resolves an issue it closes it with a trailing Closes #N line — see Pull request descriptions.

Branching & Pull Requests

If you don't have push access to this repo, fork it and open your PR from a branch on your fork back to main here — everything below about branch naming and commit hygiene still applies, it just happens on your fork instead of a branch of this repo directly. The rest of this section assumes you do have push access (maintainers, regular contributors).

• Branch off main before starting work. Don't accumulate uncommitted changes directly on main. (If you already started editing before branching, that's fine — create the branch now, before your first commit; branching doesn't touch the working tree.)

• Merge target is main, via PR. Contributors open the PR; the repo owner merges it. Don't merge your own PR.

• Don't merge until the ## Verification checklist is fully checked. Unchecked boxes are outstanding manual checks, not decoration. See Pull request descriptions below.

• Prefix in-progress PRs with WIP:. If the branch still has code changes coming, open it as WIP: type(scope): description. Gitea recognizes the prefix, flags the PR as a draft, and refuses to merge it until the prefix is removed; drop it once the branch is complete.

  WIP: signals more changes are coming — not "done but unverified". A finished branch waiting on manual checks is an ordinary PR whose ## Verification boxes aren't all ticked yet; that's already the merge gate above and doesn't need the prefix. The two are independent: a PR can be WIP with everything ticked, or complete with checks outstanding.

• Keep feature branches focused. If you stumble onto something unrelated to your current task while working (a pre-existing bug, a stray cleanup), don't fold it into the same commit or PR. Handle it with one of these, in order of preference:

  1. Separate branch, separate PR, merged to main independently. The default for anything that doesn't overlap the code your current branch touches. The two PRs review and merge independently, in either order.
  2. Separate branch and PR, then sync main back into your feature branch once it merges. Use this only when the unrelated fix actually touches the same file/function as your feature branch, or your feature branch depends on the corrected behavior to work or test correctly.
  3. Commit directly to main. Reserved for changes too small to justify a branch, or genuinely urgent fixes. Always ask for explicit approval before doing this — there's no standing exception, no matter how trivial the change looks.

Pull request descriptions

Fill in .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md — Gitea pre-loads it into the description box when you open a PR. Every PR carries, in this order:

• ## Summary — what changed and why, as a short paragraph, 2-5 bullets, or both. Name concrete paths and identifiers in backticks, and explain the reasoning rather than restating the diff.

• Optional ## sections — add what the change actually needs (Root cause, Why, How it works, Behavior, Docs, Notes, Scope note, Opinionated guard (C1-C6)), and skip them entirely for a straightforward change. A breaking change (title ending in ! before the colon) must include ## ⚠️ Breaking Change with the migration path.

• ## Verification — always last. Every check this change needs, as a checkbox list, each with the exact command and its expected result. A checked box means verified, whether programmatically (test suite, linter, docs verifier, CI) or by hand; check those off before opening the PR. An unchecked box is an outstanding manual check the reviewer still has to perform — leave anything you couldn't verify yourself unchecked rather than dropping it.

  This list is the merge gate: a PR isn't merged until every box is checked. Only list checks that can actually be resolved — one nobody can run blocks the PR indefinitely. Put genuinely unverifiable caveats, assumptions, and known limitations in ## Notes instead, where they inform the review without gating it.

When a PR resolves a tracked issue, close it with a trailing Closes #42 line at the end of ## Summary — not at the very bottom of the body, since ## Verification is always last. Fixes #N and Resolves #N behave identically. Repeat the keyword for each issue (Closes #42, closes #43); a bare #43 is only a link and won't close anything. To point at a related issue that should stay open, drop the keyword and use Refs #42. Leave the line out entirely when no issue is involved.

Commit Conventions

Commit subjects follow Conventional Commits:

type(scope): description

Types currently in use in this repo: feat, fix, docs, test, chore, perf. The scope is usually the function, component, or subsystem touched (e.g. feat(help): ..., fix(scrub): ..., chore(docs): ...). Look at git log for recent examples before picking a type/scope for something novel.

Fish Coding Standards

File header

Every hand-authored .fish file starts with:

# Copyright (C) 2026 Rootiest
# SPDX-License-Identifier: AGPL-3.0-or-later

(A few completion scripts adapted directly from a tool's own upstream completions keep that tool's original attribution comment instead of this header — match whichever convention the specific file already follows. New files use the standard header above.)

Public function documentation header

Every user-facing function gets a machine-parsed comment header directly above its function line. This header is the single source of truth for the generated manual (docs/fish-config.md / the man page / the docs site) — see Documentation Pipeline for how it gets consumed. The parser (docs/manualtools.py) recognizes these labels, all optional except where noted:

Label	Purpose
CATEGORY	Required to appear in the manual at all — see below.
COMPONENT	Only for functions gated by the opinionated-component system.
DEPENDENCIES	Other functions this one calls that a reader may want to look up.
SYNOPSIS	One-line usage form.
DESCRIPTION	Prose description; can span multiple paragraphs.
ARGUMENTS	Flags/positional args, one per line.
EXIT STATUS	Exit codes and what they mean.
RETURNS	For functions used for their output/return value rather than exit status.
EXAMPLE	One or more realistic invocations.
NOTES	Anything else worth flagging (fallback behavior, caveats, gotchas).

A full example (functions/claude.fish):

# Copyright (C) 2026 Rootiest
# SPDX-License-Identifier: AGPL-3.0-or-later

# CATEGORY
#   12-ai-and-developer-tools
#
# COMPONENT
#   aliases/dev-tools
#
# DEPENDENCIES
#   agents-init
#
# SYNOPSIS
#   claude [ARGS...]
#
# DESCRIPTION
#   Wrapper for the claude CLI that ensures the AGENTS/ sub-repository is
#   initialized and any agent-made changes are committed before launch.
#   ...

CATEGORY is the opt-in gate for the manual: a function with no # CATEGORY line produces no manual entry at all — this is how bundled plugin internals and prompt guts stay out of user-facing docs without an exclusion list. CATEGORY must exactly match one of the existing docs/manual/05-functions/NN-*.md stubs:

01-file-and-directory      08-terminal-management
02-navigation               09-clipboard
03-editors-and-viewers      10-network
04-git-and-version-control  11-pager-and-logging
05-package-management       12-ai-and-developer-tools
06-dependency-management    13-media-and-utilities
07-system-and-monitoring    14-miscellaneous

If your function genuinely doesn't fit any of these, add a new docs/manual/05-functions/NN-your-category.md stub (with frontmatter matching its siblings) rather than force-fitting it into an existing one.

Private/internal helper functions

Functions named with a leading _ (e.g. _agents_init_ensure_gitignore, __fish_config_op_enabled) are excluded from the manual unconditionally, regardless of whether they carry a CATEGORY line — so they generally don't have one. They should still carry the standard file header, and a lighter SYNOPSIS/DESCRIPTION comment is encouraged wherever the function's purpose or calling convention isn't obvious from its body, matching the convention already used across __fish_config_op_*.fish and similar files.

Function declaration

Give every function a --description, since it's what shows up in fish -c 'functions'/completions and other introspection:

function my_function --description 'Short, imperative description'

Colored --help output

Every function with a -h/--help flag uses this standardized color palette (established across the codebase 2026-08-22):

set -l c_head  (set_color --bold cyan)   # section headers
set -l c_cmd   (set_color --bold)        # the command name itself (theme-adaptive)
set -l c_flag  (set_color yellow)        # flags
set -l c_arg   (set_color cyan)          # required-argument placeholders
set -l c_dim   (set_color brblack)       # optional-argument placeholders
set -l c_ok    (set_color green)         # success/positive status
set -l c_warn  (set_color yellow)        # warnings
set -l c_err   (set_color red)           # errors
set -l c_reset (set_color normal)

Not every function needs every variable — pull in only the ones your help text actually uses. Structure the usage block as Usage:, then sections for arguments/flags/examples as needed; see functions/rand_string.fish or any recently-touched function for a full worked example.

Opinionated Components

Some functionality in this config is classified into one of six toggleable categories (C1–C6: aliases, autoexec, overrides, integrations, logging, greeting) plus sub-categories, so users can disable pieces of it via config-settings or universal variables. If you're adding something that shadows a builtin, runs at startup, overrides a key binding/environment variable, or otherwise falls under an existing category, tag it with a # COMPONENT header (<category>/<subcategory>, e.g. overrides/key-bindings) and guard it with __fish_config_op_enabled. See the README's Minimal Mode section for the full category list and toggle semantics, and AGENTS/specs/2026-08-17-opinionated-component-subcategories-design.md for the underlying design. Most new functions are not opinionated components — only tag something if it fits an existing category; this isn't something to force.

Documentation Pipeline

docs/manual/ is the single source of truth for the user manual, man page, and documentation site. Never hand-edit docs/fish-config.md or docs/fish-config.1 — they're generated by docs/build-manual.py from docs/manual/** plus every function's doc-header (see above), verified by docs/verify-manual.py, and auto-committed by CI on push to main (chore(docs): regenerate manual, man page, and component registry).

If you're changing something under docs/manual/ directly, or adding a function whose CATEGORY/COMPONENT header should surface new content, you can build and check it locally before pushing:

python3 docs/build-manual.py --concat -o docs/fish-config.md
python3 docs/verify-manual.py

CI runs the same verification and regenerates the site/man page — a broken manual won't get published, but running it locally saves a round trip.

Write doc-headers as plain text — no backticks. -a/--all, __fish_config_op_aliases and ~/.config/fish/config.fish are typed bare, because the header is also read as-is by config-help and by anyone opening the file. docs/codespans.py adds the inline code spans when it renders, so the SSOT never carries them; see docs/site/README.md for which shapes it recognises. That pass runs for every output — the site, the man page and config-help — so a token is typeset the same way wherever it is read.

Two rules apply to backticks you write under docs/manual/ as well:

• Never inside an indented block. A four-space block is verbatim in every renderer, so a backtick there is a literal character on the page rather than markup.
• Never wrapped across a line break. Markdown accepts a span split over two lines, but config-help pairs backticks one line at a time and would show the halves literally. Reflow the sentence instead.

docs/verify-manual.py enforces both.

Testing

fish tests/run-tests.fish

Runs before every push and gates the documentation build in CI. Two phases:

1. Syntax lint — every tracked .fish file (config.fish, functions/, conf.d/, completions/, integrations/) is checked with fish -n.
2. Sandboxed functional checks — the config is copied into a throwaway HOME/XDG_CONFIG_HOME sandbox (never this checkout itself, since it doubles as a real ~/.config/fish) and loaded as an isolated interactive session. tests/functional.fish then runs against foundational behavior: XDG/PATH/CDPATH setup, key bindings, abbreviations, core functions, the opinionated-component registry, and more.

To add a new functional check, add a test_* function to tests/functional.fish — it's picked up automatically by functional_test_main, no registration needed. Return 0 on pass, non-zero on fail; print a short diagnostic on failure.

Secrets & Machine-Specific Config

Nothing containing credentials, tokens, personal identifiers, or a specific machine's paths belongs in this repo — not even in a PR. That kind of thing lives in each user's own private overlay (~/.config/.user-dots/fish/secrets.fish and local.fish), which is git-ignored by design. If you're writing something that needs a secret or a machine-specific path, source it from there rather than hardcoding it. Everything else — general-purpose, reusable across machines — belongs in the tracked repo as normal. See README's Personalization section and docs/manual/07-customization.md for the full mechanics.

License

This project is licensed under AGPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE). Every new hand-authored file needs the SPDX header shown in File header above.