Audience Guide

This guide helps different contributor types find the best entry point quickly.

Timeline anchor: Foundational AI research and cross-platform experimentation by the human founder began in 2024. After partial loss of early artifacts, AINL workstreams were rebuilt, retested, and formalized in overlapping phases through 2025-2026.

For GitHub Developers

• Start with: README.md
• Then read:
  • docs/architecture/ARCHITECTURE_OVERVIEW.md
  • CONTRIBUTING.md
  • docs/DOCS_INDEX.md
• Run baseline checks:
  • .venv/bin/python scripts/run_test_profiles.py --profile core

For Public Readers and First-Time Evaluators

• Start with:
  • README.md
  • docs/DOCS_INDEX.md
  • docs/PROJECT_ORIGIN_AND_ATTRIBUTION.md
  • docs/RELEASE_READINESS.md
• If you want the shortest honest picture of the project:
  • treat the compiler/runtime/graph tooling as the core,
  • treat target breadth as uneven in maturity,
  • use tooling/artifact_profiles.json to distinguish strict-valid examples from compatibility artifacts.

For Researchers and Analysts

• Start with:
  • docs/PROJECT_ORIGIN_AND_ATTRIBUTION.md
  • docs/AINL_SPEC.md
  • docs/CONFORMANCE.md
  • docs/TRAINING_ALIGNMENT_RUNBOOK.md
• Key artifacts:
  • corpus/curated/model_eval_report_v5_aligned.json
  • corpus/curated/model_eval_trends.json
  • corpus/curated/alignment_run_health.json
• Citation metadata:
  • CITATION.cff

For Data Scientists / ML Engineers

• Start with:
  • docs/FINETUNE_GUIDE.md
  • docs/TRAINING_ALIGNMENT_RUNBOOK.md
  • scripts/finetune_ainl.py
  • scripts/eval_finetuned_model.py
• Model-quality focus metrics:
  • strict_ainl_rate
  • runtime_compile_rate
  • nonempty_rate

For AI Agents (Any Size)

• Start with:
  • docs/BOT_ONBOARDING.md (entrypoint; before implementation, complete docs/OPENCLAW_IMPLEMENTATION_PREFLIGHT.md; see tooling/bot_bootstrap.json)
  • docs/DOCS_INDEX.md
  • docs/AI_AGENT_CONTINUITY.md
  • docs/CONTRIBUTING_AI_AGENTS.md
  • docs/reference/GLOSSARY.md
• Minimum handoff payload:
  • files changed
  • behavior deltas
  • verification status
  • next command

For Product and Program Stakeholders

• Start with:
  • docs/RELEASE_READINESS.md
  • docs/runtime/TARGETS_ROADMAP.md
  • docs/GITHUB_RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md
• Track latest status from:
  • corpus/curated/alignment_run_health.json

Fastest Shared Entry Path

If unsure, use this sequence:

1. README.md
2. docs/DOCS_INDEX.md
3. docs/architecture/ARCHITECTURE_OVERVIEW.md
4. CONTRIBUTING.md