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Contributing to github.com/agentruntimecontrolprotocol/go-sdk

Thanks for your interest in improving the Go SDK for ARCP. This document covers how to report issues, propose changes, and get a change merged.

By participating you agree to the Code of Conduct.

Where changes belong

ARCP is two things in two places, and a change belongs to exactly one of them:

  • The protocol — the wire format, message semantics, lease rules, error taxonomy, feature flags. These live in the specification repository. If your idea changes what goes on the wire or what a conformant runtime must do, it is a spec change — open it there, not here. This SDK implements the spec; it does not define it.
  • This SDK — how the protocol is expressed idiomatically in Go: bugs, ergonomics, performance, missing-but-specified features, docs, tests. Those belong here.

When in doubt, open an issue here and we'll redirect if it's really a protocol question.

The golden rule: conform, don't extend

A change to this SDK must keep it a faithful client of ARCP v1.1 (draft). Concretely:

  • Don't invent wire behavior. No envelope fields, event kinds, error codes, or feature flags that the spec doesn't define. If you need one, it's a spec proposal first.
  • Negotiate honestly. Only advertise a feature flag in session.hello once the SDK actually implements it. The feature matrix in the README must match what the code negotiates — a row marked Supported is a promise.
  • Respect the semantics. Sequence numbers stay gap-free and monotonic; LEASE_EXPIRED and BUDGET_EXHAUSTED stay non-retryable; the effective feature set is the intersection of client and runtime advertisements. Tests must not paper over a semantic the spec requires.
  • Stay layered. This SDK controls runtimes. It does not expose tools (that's MCP) or export telemetry (that's OpenTelemetry). PRs that blur those layers will be asked to move the logic out.

Reporting bugs

Open an issue with: the SDK version and Go version, the runtime you connected to, a minimal reproduction (the smallest program that triggers it), what you expected, and what happened. A failing test is the best possible bug report. Wire-level traces (the envelopes exchanged) help enormously for protocol behavior — redact any auth.token or provisioned-credential value first.

Proposing a change

For anything beyond a small fix, open an issue describing the problem before writing code, so we can agree on the approach. Small, focused PRs review faster than large ones; if a change is big, say so early and we'll help break it down.

Development setup

This SDK targets Go 1.25 or newer (matching the go directive in go.mod). Clone the repo and let the Go toolchain fetch dependencies on the first build or test — no separate install step is required. golangci-lint is used for local linting; install it once with go install github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/v2/cmd/golangci-lint@latest.

git clone https://github.com/agentruntimecontrolprotocol/go-sdk.git
cd go-sdk
go mod download
go build ./...

Tests and conformance

Two layers must pass before a PR merges:

  • Unit tests — this SDK's own suite:

    go test -race ./...

  • Conformance — the SDK's behavior against the reference runtime. New protocol-facing code (session negotiation, event sequencing, lease handling, error mapping) needs a test that exercises the real exchange, not a mock that assumes the answer. The conformance harness lives in tests/conformance/ and runs in-process against the SDK's own reference server; invoke it with go test ./tests/conformance/... (or make conformance), and set ARCP_CONFORMANCE_OUT=/path/to/conformance.json to emit the machine-readable section coverage summary tracked in CONFORMANCE.md.

CI runs both on every PR. A PR that changes which feature flags the SDK negotiates must also update the README feature matrix in the same change.

Coding standards

Code is formatted with gofmt, vetted with go vet, and linted with golangci-lint using the configuration in .golangci.yml. Run the full local gate via the Makefile:

gofmt -w .
go vet ./...
golangci-lint run
make gates

Match the surrounding code. Public API changes need doc comments and an entry in the changelog. Prefer clarity over cleverness in a library others build on.

Commit and pull-request conventions

  • Write focused commits with present-tense, imperative subjects (add result_chunk reassembly, not added / adds).

  • Reference the issue a PR closes (Closes #123).

  • Keep the PR description honest about scope and any spec sections touched.

  • Rebase on the default branch and ensure CI is green before requesting review.

  • Sign off your commits to certify the Developer Certificate of Origin:

    git commit -s -m "your message"

Releases

Releases are cut by maintainers. The module is published on pkg.go.dev via the Go module proxy: tagging the repo with a semver vX.Y.Z git tag and pushing the tag is the publish trigger — pkg.go.dev fetches the tagged module on first request. The SDK is versioned with semantic versioning independently of the protocol version it speaks; a protocol version bump is noted in the changelog when the negotiated ARCP version changes.

License

By contributing, you agree that your contributions are licensed under the project's Apache-2.0 license.