File Hygiene

.gitignore

• Maintain a proper .gitignore for the project's language and tooling
• Cover: build artifacts, cache directories, IDE/editor files, OS files, dependency directories
• Use templates from github/gitignore as a starting point

Generated Files

• Never commit generated files (compiled output, bundled assets, rendered docs)
• If a file can be reproduced from source, it doesn't belong in the repo
• Narrow exception for platform-required compiled artifacts.
• Applies when the hosting platform must read a compiled file directly and cannot invoke the compiler itself (dependency lock files like package-lock.json, Package.resolved, gradle.lockfile; workflow files compiled from a source form)
• Commit both source and compiled form
• Mark the compiled file as generated via .gitattributes (linguist-generated=true, merge=ours) so diffs stay readable and merges don't conflict
• Every other reproducible file stays out of the repo

Standalone Scripts

• Scripts must have entry-point guards (if __name__ == "__main__" in Python, [[ "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" == "$0" ]] in bash, if (require.main === module) in Node)
• This makes scripts both executable and importable for testing

I/O Conventions

• stdout for program output, stderr for errors and diagnostics
• Exit 0 on success, non-zero on failure
• Use meaningful exit codes when the platform supports them

Idempotency

• Scripts should be safe to run multiple times
• Don't fail if a directory already exists, a file was already processed, or a resource was already created