What is handbook?

The Astrid Contributor Handbook is a guide for anyone who wants to contribute to the Astrid project. Instead of being a software application itself, this repository contains a collection of documents that explain the rules, expectations, and workflows for people working on the codebase. It covers topics like how the project organizes its code across multiple repositories, the philosophy behind its core design, how changes get proposed, and how new versions are released. At a high level, the handbook is built as a digital book using a tool called mdBook, which turns plain text files into a readable, navigable website. To view the documentation locally, a contributor runs a single command that opens the book in their web browser. The content itself is organized around several core concepts: a "polyrepo" structure (meaning the project's code is split across many separate repositories rather than living in one giant one), a "kernel-is-dumb law" (a design principle suggesting the core of the system should remain simple), an "RFC trigger" (a process for proposing and discussing significant changes before building them), and a tiered system for managing different levels of contributions. This resource is aimed at developers and collaborators who are actively involved with the project, whether as internal team members at Unicity Labs or as outside contributors. For example, an engineer who wants to add a new feature would consult the handbook to learn how to submit an RFC proposal and understand what review tier their contribution falls into. A project manager might read it to understand the release process and when new versions ship. The README itself is quite brief and doesn't go into detail on the specific contents of each section, so the actual depth of the guidance lives inside the book's pages rather than on the repository's main landing page.