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Contributing to Open Cloud Agents

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Open Cloud Agents! We are building an open, enterprise-grade multi-agent cloud architecture mapped across the AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Well-Architected Frameworks.

By contributing, you help make cloud architecture, security, GitOps, SRE, and FinOps more reliable and autonomous for engineering teams worldwide.

How You Can Contribute

We welcome contributions in several key areas:

1. New Agent Personas

Have an idea for a specialized agent (e.g., mlops-engineer, database-reliability-architect, identity-zero-trust-specialist)? - Follow the structure used in agents/7-agent-master-suite/. - Ensure each agent includes: - Strict scope and mandate - Explicit non-goals (what the agent does not own) - Clear input/output handoffs with upstream and downstream agents - Negative trade-off accounting and safety guardrails

2. Improving Agent Prompts & Guardrails

  • Refining system instructions to eliminate hallucinations.
  • Hardening destructive action checks (e.g., state-loss prevention in Terraform/OpenTofu, zero-downtime database migrations).
  • Updating tool definitions to support new MCP servers and cloud provider APIs.

3. Benchmarks & Real-World Evaluation Cases

  • Share prompt evaluations, scenario tests, and test suites that evaluate agent performance across real multi-cloud topologies.

4. Bug Reports & Architectural RFCs

  • If an agent suggests an outdated pattern, non-optimal cloud tiering, or fails a security standard, open an Issue with context and proposed remediations.

Contribution Process

  1. Fork the Repository and create your branch from main: 
    git checkout -b feat/my-new-agent
  2. Make Your Changes following our engineering standards (see docs/engineering-standards.md).
  3. Run the Local Validation Suite & CI (act): Before pushing, verify all skill specs, permissions, and markdown links pass: 
    # Option A: Fast lightweight check (Python):
python3 scripts/ci/validate_repo.py
python3 scripts/agents/agent_pipeline.py --validate

# Option B: Run the full GitHub Actions CI suite locally in Docker with act:
act --container-architecture linux/amd64
  4. Guardrail Checklist:
  5. [ ] No hardcoded secrets, keys, or credentials (verified by Gitleaks in CI).
  6. [ ] All shell scripts have executable bits (chmod +x scripts/*.sh).
  7. [ ] Skill specs have valid YAML frontmatter (name:, description:).
  8. [ ] Internal markdown links resolve properly without broken relative paths.
  9. [ ] Follows conventional commits (feat:, fix:, docs:, chore:).
  10. Submit a Pull Request with a concise description of your changes, the rationale, and any sample outputs or tests.
  11. Sign Off & Join the Roster: Fill out the Contributor Sign-Off section in your PR and add your entry to CONTRIBUTORS.md.

✍️ Contributor Sign-Off & Recognition

We believe every contributor deserves public recognition for their work. When you contribute to Open Cloud Agents, you can sign off your contribution and join our Contributors Hall of Fame (CONTRIBUTORS.md).

1. Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) Sign-Off

We enforce standard DCO sign-offs on all commits. You can automatically sign off commits using the -s flag: 

git commit -s -m "feat(skills): add automated canary rollback verification script"
This appends a verifiable sign-off line: 
Signed-off-by: Your Name <your.email@example.com>

Following standard open-source industry practice and to protect community members against automated web scrapers and spambots, we recommend signing off with your GitHub Privacy No-Reply Email: 

<username>@users.noreply.github.com
You can find your private GitHub address under GitHub Settings > Emails > Keep my email addresses private.

For direct professional networking, we encourage contributors to link their LinkedIn Profile or Google Developer Profile instead of exposing personal mailboxes. Standard public emails are also accepted if preferred.

3. Professional Profiles (LinkedIn & Google Developer)

To showcase your cloud and AI engineering credentials, you are encouraged to link: * LinkedIn Profile: e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/in/<username> * Google Developer Profile: e.g., https://g.dev/<username>

4. Adding Yourself to CONTRIBUTORS.md

With your pull request, feel free to add your name, focus area, and profile badges directly to CONTRIBUTORS.md!

Community & Conduct

We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all contributors. Please treat others with respect and constructive professionalism.