Contributing

Thank you for taking interest in Ding. The project aims to stay simple, useful, and pleasant to maintain.

Local setup

cp .env.example .env
npm install
npm run dev

The server runs on http://localhost:3000. The dashboard dev server runs on http://localhost:5173. The widget demo is available at http://localhost:3000/demo/ after the widget has been built.

Useful commands

npm run build    # build all packages
npm test         # run all tests
npm run check:size  # verify widget bundle size

Pull request standard

• Keep each pull request focused
• Include tests for server or widget behaviour when the behaviour changes
• Keep the widget dependency budget tight
• Update documentation when a public command, API, option, or deployment step changes
• Run the build, tests, and bundle-size check before requesting review

Design principles

• The dashboard should feel calm, direct, and operational
• The widget should stay polite, fast, and small
• Security defaults should favour self-hosters who may be deploying Ding for the first time
• Documentation should be clear enough for a careful developer to follow without guesswork

Code style

• Use TypeScript for all packages
• Prefer small modules with plain data flow
• Keep comments useful and rare
• Avoid adding abstractions before there is a real pattern to name