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Fixes #3975. Add specs/constitution.md to consolidate tenets and engineering philosophy#5297

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tig merged 2 commits into
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copilot/add-specs-constitution-file
May 12, 2026
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Fixes #3975. Add specs/constitution.md to consolidate tenets and engineering philosophy#5297
tig merged 2 commits into
developfrom
copilot/add-specs-constitution-file

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Copilot AI commented May 12, 2026

Terminal.Gui's design tenets were scattered across six files with no single authoritative source. This adds specs/constitution.md as that source, and updates CONTRIBUTING.md and CLAUDE.md to point to it.

Changes

  • specs/constitution.md (new) — Authoritative constitution with:

    • Mission statement and explicit non-goals
    • Design tenets in precedence order, consolidating from keyboard.md, mouse.md, and newinv2.md (Users Have Final Control → Keyboard First → More Editor Than CLI → Platform Consistency → If It's Hot It Works → Separation of Concerns → Testability → Performance → Docs are the Spec → Graphemes Not Runes)
    • Engineering philosophy (Amazon PE Community Tenets)
    • Code style tenets (sourced from CONTRIBUTING.md)
    • Sub-project relationship clause
  • CONTRIBUTING.md — Header blockquote now references specs/constitution.md

  • CLAUDE.md — Header blockquote now references specs/constitution.md for AI agents

Pull Request checklist:

  • I've named my PR in the form of "Fixes #issue. Terse description."
  • My code follows the style guidelines of Terminal.Gui - if you use Visual Studio, hit CTRL-K-D to automatically reformat your files before committing.
  • My code follows the Terminal.Gui library design guidelines
  • I ran dotnet test before commit
  • I have made corresponding changes to the API documentation (using /// style comments)
  • My changes generate no new warnings
  • I have checked my code and corrected any poor grammar or misspellings
  • I conducted basic QA to assure all features are working

…neering philosophy

Agent-Logs-Url: https://github.com/gui-cs/Terminal.Gui/sessions/4c033f5f-f378-48eb-b3cf-3777f63f0ef6

Co-authored-by: tig <585482+tig@users.noreply.github.com>
Copilot AI changed the title [WIP] Add specs/constitution.md to consolidate design tenets and philosophy Fixes #3975. Add specs/constitution.md to consolidate tenets and engineering philosophy May 12, 2026
Copilot finished work on behalf of tig May 12, 2026 14:40
Copilot AI requested a review from tig May 12, 2026 14:40
@tig tig marked this pull request as ready for review May 12, 2026 14:51
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proposal: add specs/constitution.md to consolidate tenets and engineering philosophy

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