docs: add professional contributing section and CONTRIBUTING.md

- New CONTRIBUTING.md with clear ways to help, development setup, and guidelines
- Updated README with 'Contributing & Help Wanted' section that points to it
- Positions the project as actively seeking community involvement for the 1.0 series

Part of the v1.0.0 release candidate preparation.

Assisted By: Grok AI (Sonny)

Author: cvquesty

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+# Contributing to vim-openvox
+
+Thank you for your interest in contributing to vim-openvox! This plugin aims to be a high-quality, modern Vim experience for OpenVox and Puppet 8+ users, closely aligned with the official style guide and the battle-tested vim-puppet reference implementation.
+
+## Ways to Contribute
+
+We welcome contributions in many forms:
+
+- **Bug reports** — Especially around indentation, arrow alignment, and linting integration.
+- **Feature requests** — New completion sources, better navigation, LSP integration ideas, etc.
+- **Code contributions** — Fixes, improvements, and new features.
+- **Documentation** — Improvements to README, help text, or this guide.
+- **Testing** — Running the plugin on real-world Puppet/OpenVox codebases and reporting issues.
+
+## Development Setup
+
+1. Clone the repository:
+   ```bash
+   git clone https://github.com/cvquesty/vim-openvox.git
+   cd vim-openvox
+   ```
+
+2. For Vim development, you can load the plugin directly from the directory using Pathogen, vim-plug (with a local path), or Vim 8+ packages.
+
+3. Useful tools:
+   - `vint` (Vim script linter): `pip install vim-vint`
+   - A recent Vim 8.1+ or Neovim for testing async features.
+
+## Code Style & Guidelines
+
+- Follow the existing code style (2-space indentation in Vim files).
+- Keep changes minimal and focused.
+- When porting or aligning logic with the vim-puppet reference, prefer clarity and style-guide fidelity over cleverness.
+- Add clear comments for non-obvious logic (especially in `indent/` and `align/`).
+
+## Submitting Changes
+
+1. Create a feature branch from `development`:
+   ```bash
+   git checkout development
+   git checkout -b fix/some-issue
+   ```
+
+2. Make your changes, test them thoroughly (especially indentation and alignment on real manifests).
+
+3. Commit with a clear message following the style of recent commits (e.g., `fix(indent): ...`, `docs: ...`).
+
+4. Push your branch and open a Pull Request against the `development` branch.
+
+5. In the PR description, please include:
+   - What problem it solves
+   - How you tested it
+   - Any related issues
+
+## Reporting Issues
+
+When reporting bugs, please include:
+- Vim or Neovim version (`:version`)
+- Output of `:PuppetLint` or `:OpenvoxLint` if relevant
+- A minimal reproducible example (a small `.pp` snippet)
+- Expected vs actual behavior
+
+## Recognition
+
+Contributors will be acknowledged in the README or release notes as the project matures. Every improvement helps make OpenVox development more pleasant in Vim.
+
+Thank you for helping make vim-openvox great!
+
+---
+
+*This document is part of the v1.0.0 release candidate effort.*

README.md

@@ -146,6 +146,22 @@ Every feature is built around the
 - **Comments:** `#` only (C-style comments highlighted as warnings)
 - **Variables:** `$snake_case` with namespace qualification
 
+## Contributing & Help Wanted
+
+vim-openvox is actively being aligned with the battle-tested vim-puppet gold standard while adding OpenVox-specific enhancements and deeper tooling.
+
+We are looking for contributors in several areas:
+
+- **Core improvements** — Further hardening of indentation and arrow alignment
+- **Testing** — Adding regression tests for indent, alignment, and linting
+- **Documentation** — Improving examples, tutorials, and the help text
+- **LSP / Completion** — Integration ideas with `openvox-editor-services` or coc.nvim / nvim-lsp
+- **CI & Packaging** — Making the plugin easier to test and distribute
+
+If you're interested in helping, please see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for guidelines and how to get started.
+
+All contributions — code, documentation, testing, or ideas — are very welcome. This is a community project to make OpenVox development in Vim as smooth and powerful as possible.
+
 ## License
 
 Apache-2.0