# Contributing to Mesh

Mesh is one of the [Transaction Science open standards](../README.md). The wire
format and the right to fork are public; Transaction Science is the steward, not
the proprietor.

## Ground rules

- **Reference code** (`mesh-rs/`) is Apache-2.0. **Specification text** (`SPEC.md`)
  is CC-BY-4.0.
- The Rust toolchain is pinned by the repo `rust-toolchain.toml`. `cargo test
  --workspace` MUST pass and `cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets` MUST be
  warning-free.
- Any change to a wire structure (the `ServeRequest` id, the `mesh/1` receipt
  core, the canonical encoding) requires regenerating and committing
  `conformance/v1/`:
  ```text
  cargo run -p mesh-conformance --bin gen-vectors -- ../conformance/v1
  ```

## Two invariants are correctness, not style

A PR that weakens either will be declined:

1. **Authorisation happens outside the model.** The JCP grant check runs in the
   steward, before any inference. A prompt can never grant itself budget or
   capability.
2. **Honesty is enforced at seal time.** A receipt may not claim a measurement it
   does not have: `HwShunt` requires a measured figure, `Estimator` forbids one.
   A deployment without a hardware meter produces honest `Estimator` receipts.

## Scope

Mesh is the serving + routing fabric. It rides on [JCP](../jcp/) for
authorisation and JCR-1 for receipts, dispatches to runtimes such as
[JouleClaw](../jouleclaw/), and routes across compute described by
[EOC](../eoc/). Proposals that re-implement a grant model, a receipt envelope, or
an energy meter that the family already publishes will be redirected to compose
the existing primitive instead.