Contributing

Updated Nov 4, 2026

Cardealer is an open-source Fairspec extension developed by the Datist team. Everyone is welcome to help shape it with bug reports, ideas and questions; changes to the extension come from team members.

Contributors

Report a bug

Open an issue on GitHub Issues. A good report includes:

the Cardealer version and how you use it
the smallest dataset or profile that reproduces the problem
the result you got and the result you expected

Use GitHub Discussions for anything that isn't a bug:

Ideas: features and improvements you'd like to see
Q&A: questions about using Cardealer
Show and tell: projects built with Cardealer

Ideas the team picks up turn into issues.

Members

The rest of this guide is for Datist team members working on Cardealer.

Prerequisites

Development:
- Node 24+ (with pnpm) - How to Install
- Python 3.12+ (with uv) - How to Install
- Rust (with cargo) - How to Install
Releasing:
- Trusted publishers for datisthq/cardealer, workflow release.yaml, environment release, on npm, PyPI and crates.io
- In case you use it on GitHub, updated the publishing source in the settings to Github Actions.

Development

Getting Started

Start by cloning the repository, installing the dependencies, and starting the site:

git clone https://github.com/datisthq/cardealer.git
cd cardealer
pnpm install
pnpm start

Managing the Project

pnpm install - Install dependencies
pnpm build - Build the TypeScript, Python and Rust packages
pnpm publish:profiles - Publish the current version's profiles and schemas to the site
pnpm format - Format the project files to consistent style
pnpm start - Start the documentation site in development mode
pnpm test - Verify project integrity

Working on the Extension

The fiels you need to edit to update the extension:

standard/profiles/ - Edit the profile to model your dataset
standard/schemas/ - Edit the schemas to model your data tables
standard/specs/ - Edit the specification prose
standard/overview/ - Edit the overview and examples
typescript/, python/, rust/ - Edit the three libraries to match
conformance/ - Edit the cases that pin the behaviour
.livemark/routes/index.tsx - Edit the homepage

There are no generators: a change to the standard is carried by hand into the specification, all three libraries and the conformance cases in the same pull request. The .agents/skills/standard-development skill is the checklist.

Releasing

After your pull request is ready to be merged, you can release a new version of the extension by merging the pull request into the main branch:

Squash and merge the PR using conventional commits.
In case you use it on GitHub, Github Actions will automatically create a new release (publishing to PyPI and NPM waits for the Fairspec base libraries to be released), publish the documentation to GitHub Pages.