CONTRIBUTORS.md

CONTRIBUTORS.md is a Markdown file that lists the people and organizations who have helped build a project — through code, documentation, design, translation, testing, or other work. Unlike an AUTHORS file focused strictly on copyright, a CONTRIBUTORS file is about recognition and community, and specifications like All Contributors have grown up around it to acknowledge non-code contributions as well.

• Community recognition - A visible, durable acknowledgment of everyone who moved the project forward.
• Beyond code - Captures docs, design, outreach, and maintenance work that commit history alone misses.
• Often automated - Bots such as the All Contributors app can add and format entries from a simple comment on an issue or pull request.
• Provenance signal - A record of who has touched a project, useful for trust, licensing, and continuity.

For an API platform, a healthy CONTRIBUTORS.md alongside CONTRIBUTING.md signals a living project with a real community behind its specification, SDKs, and tooling — the kind of maintenance history that operators and buyers weigh when deciding whether to depend on an open-source API. It also gives agents and automated audits a concrete, machine-readable trace of the human network sustaining a codebase.