Contributor Onboarding

Goal: get a local build, run canonical checks, and ship a safe first PR.

1) Local Setup

• Build from Source
• Build / Test / CI Command Reference

2) Run Canonical Validation

• Guard-only checks:
• python3 tests/ci/run_module_tests.py --guard-only
• Baseline QA:
• python3 tests/ci/run_baseline_qa.py --godot <module-built-binary>
• Runtime validation:
• python3 tests/runtime/run_runtime_validation.py --godot-binary <module-built-binary> --gd-mode headless

3) Understand the Codebase Quickly

• Module overview
• Architecture overview
• Render pipeline details
• Lighting details
• API index

4) First PR Expectations

• Keep scope narrow.
• Include test evidence.
• Update docs when user-visible behavior changes.
• Follow contribution standards.