CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to ZeroSnippet

Thank you for your interest in contributing to ZeroSnippet! 🚀

We welcome all contributions, especially new developer tools, UX improvements, bug fixes, and documentation updates.

---

🛠️ Adding a New Tool

ZeroSnippet is designed to make adding new utilities easy and modular.

1. Choose the Category

Find the appropriate category folder under app/(pages)/:

• website/ — Domain, URL, DNS, WHOIS, HTTP inspection
• dev/ — Formatters, validators, generators, diffing
• text/ — String manipulation, case converters, word counters
• files/ — File converters, compression, EXIF, metadata
• design/ — Color pickers, gradients, CSS generators, typography
• security/ — Hashing, encryption, JWT, SSL, tokens
• seo/ — Meta tags, sitemaps, robots, hreflang
• api-toolbox/ — Request builders, payloads, status codes

2. Create the Tool Page & Component

Under your chosen directory, create: app/(pages)/<category>/<tool-slug>/

• page.tsx — Metadata, layout, explanation, and FAQ.
• <tool-slug>-tool.tsx — Interactive client component ("use client").

3. Register the Tool in the Catalog

Open lib/tool-catalog.ts and add your tool to the corresponding toolSections entry:

{
  name: "Your Tool Name",
  href: "/<category>/<tool-slug>",
  description: "Brief 1-line description of what this tool does.",
}

4. Test Locally

Run the dev server and test your new tool:

npm run dev

---

🔒 Golden Rule: Privacy First

ZeroSnippet is built on the philosophy that developer data belongs to the developer:

• Any tool that can process data in the browser MUST process it client-side.
• Never transmit user payloads, tokens, code, or data to external servers unless the tool strictly requires network resolution (e.g. DNS or WHOIS lookup).

---

📦 Pull Request Process

1. Fork the repo and create your branch from main:

   git checkout -b feat/add-my-awesome-tool

2. Ensure the code compiles and passes linter:

   npm run build
   npm run lint

3. Commit your changes with a clear message.
4. Push to your fork and submit a Pull Request!