# How to Contribute — install and run Open Mercato locally

Source: https://www.openmercato.com/how-to-contribute

# How to contribute

Open Mercato is a community-driven organization. Whether you are an AI enthusiast, a security expert, or a frontend wizard, your contributions help eliminate "commodity coding" for everyone.

## Why Contribute?

We are building a future where developers focus on solving unique business problems while the framework handles the "boring" infrastructure.

### Influence the Standard

Help shape the AGENTS.MD protocols that define how AI interacts with enterprise code.

### Showcase Your Expertise

High-quality modules contribute to your professional standing and can lead to becoming a certified Implementation Partner.

### Built to Last

Backed by Catch The Tornado, we are committed to a long-term, stable roadmap.

## Your First 15 Minutes

Before you write code, get the environment running to see the "Modular Monolith" in action.

- 01Clone the repository`git clone https://github.com/open-mercato/open-mercato.git cd open-mercato`

- 02Install dependencies (Yarn 4+)`yarn install`

- 03Configure environment`cp apps/mercato/.env.example apps/mercato/.env # edit apps/mercato/.env`

- 04Generate + initialize + run`yarn generate yarn initialize # or: yarn reinstall yarn dev`

## We categorize contributions into four high-impact streams

### Core Framework (The Engine)

Improving the DI container (Awilix), refining the Overlay System, or optimizing the MikroORM integration.

### Community Modules

Building new "Vertical" modules like Logistics, Healthcare Patient Portal, or Advanced Billing.

### AI Engineering (Prompt Libraries)

Open Mercato is AI-native. We need contributors to refine our System Prompts for Claude, Cursor, and Copilot to ensure they generate "Open-Closed" compliant code.

### Security & Compliance

Hardening our Encrypted Vault and expanding our field-level encryption strategies (KMS/HashiCorp Vault).

## The "AI-Native" Contribution Workflow

We encourage using AI (Claude, Cursor, Copilot) to help write your contributions, provided you follow our architectural guardrails:

### Reference AGENTS.MD

Always feed our architecture rules to your AI before generating code.

### Playwright Testing

Every new feature must include E2E tests to prevent regressions.

## Contribution Guidelines

To maintain enterprise-grade quality, we follow a strict PR process:

### Branching

Use feat/ for new features, fix/ for bug fixes, and docs/ for documentation updates.

### Intellectual Honesty

If you are introducing a breaking change, highlight it clearly. We prefer modularity over "clever" hacks.

### Documentation

Every new module or core change must include an update to its respective AGENTS.MD file so the AI community can use it immediately.

## Where to Connect

### For bug reports and technical proposals.

### Real-time architectural discussions and "Show & Tell."

### Check our public roadmap to see if your idea aligns with our upcoming milestones (e.g., Vector Search integration or Advanced CPQ).

## MIT License

Open Mercato is and will remain Open Source under the MIT License. You own the code you write, and the community benefits from the foundation we build together.

## Software is about to be built completely differently.