docs: root CONTRIBUTING.adoc — satisfy the estate docs gate

[hyperpolymath]

Why

The estate docs gate (hyperpolymath/standards scripts/check-docs-presence.sh, run by the Governance reusable pinned in this repo's governance.yml) requires CONTRIBUTING at the repository root: CONTRIBUTING.md | CONTRIBUTING.adoc | 3-practice/CONTRIBUTING.adoc. Its grace cutoff (2026-08-21) has armed, so Governance / Code quality + docs fails without it.

What this is

One file: root CONTRIBUTING.adoc, following the estate norm — the gate's own blast-radius measurement found root CONTRIBUTING.adoc is what the estate actually uses (32 of 40 sampled repos). Content covers setup (this repo's Justfile), branch naming, and Conventional Commits per estate conventions. Nothing else is touched.

Witness (local)

check-docs-presence.sh . → ✅ Core documentation present (README, LICENSE, CONTRIBUTING) (was ::error::Missing required documentation: CONTRIBUTING).

Part of the estate-wide CONTRIBUTING wave (224 repos measured gate-red); one repo, one file, one PR.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: ASSERTIVE

Plan: Advanced

Run ID: 151448e4-89f3-441d-96d0-7ce3b9ddb7f8

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 154f631 and 0d42ce5.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• CONTRIBUTING.adoc

Included review availability: Your plan provides up to 1 included review per hour; 0 remain after this review.

📜 Recent review details

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout. (15)

• GitHub Check: governance / Check Workflow Staleness
• GitHub Check: scan / rust-secrets
• GitHub Check: scan / shell-secrets
• GitHub Check: governance / Well-Known (RFC 9116 + RSR)
• GitHub Check: governance / Trusted-base reduction policy
• GitHub Check: governance / Workflow security linter
• GitHub Check: governance / Guix primary / Nix fallback policy
• GitHub Check: governance / Language / package anti-pattern policy
• GitHub Check: governance / Licence consistency
• GitHub Check: governance / Security policy checks
• GitHub Check: scan / gitleaks
• GitHub Check: governance / Code quality + docs
• GitHub Check: scan / Hypatia Neurosymbolic Analysis
• GitHub Check: Julia 1.10 - ubuntu-latest
• GitHub Check: Julia 1.11 - ubuntu-latest

🔇 Additional comments (1)

CONTRIBUTING.adoc (1)

1-58: LGTM!

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📝 Summary

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation
  • Added a contributor guide covering local development workflows.
  • Documented conventions for issue reporting, branch naming, and commit messages.
  • Clarified expectations for documentation and integration testing.
  • Added guidance explaining the role of the root-level contribution guide.

Walkthrough

Added CONTRIBUTING.adoc with contribution conventions, local development commands, issue reporting requirements, branch naming rules, commit format guidance, and documentation-policy references.

Changes

Contribution Guide

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Guide foundation and local development CONTRIBUTING.adoc	Defines AsciiDoc, Conventional Commits, and integration-test conventions. Documents repository setup and just commands.
Issue and branch conventions CONTRIBUTING.adoc	Documents issue-reporting requirements and branch naming prefixes.
Commit and documentation policy CONTRIBUTING.adoc	Specifies the Conventional Commits format and explains the root-level documentation policy reference.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~3 minutes

Change: Other

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description check	✅ Passed	The description clearly explains that the PR adds root CONTRIBUTING.adoc to satisfy the estate documentation gate and documents the file contents.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly identifies the documentation change and its purpose: adding root CONTRIBUTING.adoc to satisfy the estate docs gate.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 0 functions across 0…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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_{A rabbit finds the guide in place
With tidy rules and steady pace
Branches hop by named and clear
Commits thump in format here
The docs gate nods: contribution is near}

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}