Contributing

cagent is open source. Here’s how to set up your development environment and contribute.

Development Setup

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25 or higher
• API key(s) for your chosen AI provider
• Task 3.44 or higher
• golangci-lint

Build from Source

# Clone and build
git clone https://github.com/docker/cagent.git
cd cagent
task build

# Set API keys
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key_here
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_key_here

# Run an example
./bin/cagent run examples/code.yaml

Development Commands

Dogfooding

Use cagent to work on cagent! The project includes a specialized developer agent:

cd cagent
cagent run ./golang_developer.yaml

This agent is an expert Go developer that understands the cagent codebase. Ask it questions, request fixes, or have it implement features.

Core Concepts

• Root Agent — Main entry point that coordinates the system
• Sub-Agents — Specialized agents for specific domains
• Tools — External capabilities via MCP
• Models — AI provider configurations

Code Style

The project uses golangci-lint with strict rules. As long as task lint passes, the code is stylistically acceptable.

Key conventions:

• Use fmt.Errorf("context: %w", err) for error wrapping
• Always pass context.Context as the first parameter
• Use slog for structured logging
• Use functional options pattern for constructors
• In tests: use t.Context(), t.TempDir(), t.Setenv(), and t.Parallel()

Opening Issues

File issues on the GitHub issue tracker. Please:

• Use the included issue template
• Search for existing issues before creating new ones
• Only use issues for bugs and feature requests (not support)

Submitting Pull Requests

1. Fork the repository and create a branch for your changes
2. Write your code following the style and testing guidelines above
3. Test your changes: run task lint and task test
4. Sign your commits with git commit -s (DCO required)
5. Open a pull request against the main branch

Sign Your Work

All contributions require a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) sign-off:

# Sign commits automatically
git config user.name "Your Name"
git config user.email "your.email@example.com"
git commit -s -m "Your commit message"

Community

Find us on Slack for questions and discussions.

Code of Conduct

We want to keep the cagent community welcoming, inclusive, and collaborative. Key guidelines:

• Be nice — Be courteous, respectful, and polite. No abuse of any kind will be tolerated.
• Encourage diversity — Make everyone feel welcome regardless of background.
• Keep it legal — Share only content you own and don’t break the law.
• Stay on topic — Post to the correct channel and avoid off-topic discussions.

The governance for this repository is handled by Docker Inc.