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Tau

Contributing

Tau is built in small, documented phases — partly to ship a usable agent, partly so the codebase reads as a teaching example of how a coding agent is assembled.

The build journals

Section titled “The build journals”

The detailed, phase-by-phase implementation notes, design docs, and architecture decision records live in the repository, under dev-notes/:

  • dev-notes/design/ — the high-level design docs (00-roadmap, 01-architecture, …).
  • dev-notes/architecture/ — per-phase build notes (phase-1 … phase-24), each answering: what was added, why it exists, how later phases use it.
  • dev-notes/adr/ — architecture decision records.

These are intentionally not published on this site — they’re contributor material. The published docs distill the result; see How Tau works.

Roadmap

Section titled “Roadmap”

The roadmap and phase status are tracked in GitHub issue #1.

Running the project locally

Section titled “Running the project locally”
Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/alejandro-ao/tau.git
cd tau
uv sync --dev
uv run tau --version

Checks:

Terminal window
uv run pytest
uv run ruff check .
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run mypy

The docs site

Section titled “The docs site”

The site (this site) is an Astro Starlight project under website/:

Terminal window
cd website
bun install
bun run dev      # http://localhost:4321/tau/
bun run build    # static output in website/dist/

User-facing docs live in website/src/content/docs/; the landing and “Why Tau?” pages are standalone routes in website/src/pages/.

Documentation expectations

Section titled “Documentation expectations”

Each substantial phase should leave beginner-friendly notes in dev-notes/ explaining what was added, why it exists, how it maps to Pi’s design, and how to test or use it. When a feature is user-facing, also update or add the relevant page under website/src/content/docs/.