Bootstrap the research repository foundation

[MaharshPatelX]

Summary

• establish the typed Python package and source layout
• add project configuration, deterministic seed helper, CLI, and smoke tests
• add CI for Python 3.11/3.12 formatting, linting, types, tests, and package builds
• add safe data/model/cache exclusions and dependency update policy
• publish the project blueprint, architecture, dataset, reproducibility, and research handoff docs
• add contribution, security, and pull-request guidance

Scope

This PR implements Part 1 of the project blueprint only. It does not download datasets, add heavy ML dependencies, train models, or claim benchmark results.

Validation

• git diff --cached --check passed locally
• exact staged-path review passed
• credential-prefix scan found no GitHub/AWS-style tokens
• Python is not accessible in the local execution environment, so executable checks are delegated to the included GitHub Actions matrix

License note

A code license is intentionally not selected in this PR. Choosing one grants legal rights and should be an explicit owner decision. Upstream Liquid AI models and datasets retain their own licenses.