CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md is a plain markdown file placed in a repository’s root or .github/ directory that sets out the norms, expected behavior, and enforcement process for everyone who participates in a project. Most projects do not write one from scratch; they adopt an established template — overwhelmingly the Contributor Covenant — and fill in contact and enforcement details. It answers a simple governance question for any contributor: what behavior is expected here, and who do I contact when it is not met?

• A community standard - Explicit norms for respectful participation, harassment, and inclusion across issues, pull requests, and chat.
• Enforcement path - Named contacts and a process for reporting and handling violations, so the document is more than aspirational.
• A recognized template - The Contributor Covenant provides a widely adopted, legally reviewed baseline that projects customize.
• A machine-detectable health signal - GitHub and GitLab surface its presence as part of community health and repository governance checks.

In real operations, a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md is one of the community health files I look for when assessing whether an open source API or specification is safely adoptable, sitting alongside a license, contribution guide, and CODEOWNERS. Its presence is cheap to add yet a meaningful proxy for a project that takes its contributor community seriously. As governance tooling increasingly reads repositories to grade operational maturity, the code of conduct becomes one more well-known, checkable artifact that tells both humans and automated reviewers a project has thought about how people work together.