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+# Guidelines for contributing to LOOS
+
+We're glad you're interested in contributing to LOOS. This document contains a set of suggestions for how to do so most efficiently.
+
+- If you've written a new tool (python or C++), we suggest the standard GitHub approach: fork the main branch of the LOOS repository, add your tool and whatever is needed to build it, and make a pull request. In that pull request, please describe the tool, what its use-cases are, and what (if any) assumptions the tool makes. We will give feedback to help your tool match the coding and design style present in LOOS.
+
+- If you're fixing a bug in a tool or the library, please open a [new issue](https://github.com/GrossfieldLab/loos/issues) on GitHub, or if there's already an open issue please comment on it so we know you're working on a fix. Fork the main branch, and once you're ready you can open a pull request, referencing that issue.
+
+- If you're adding a new feature to the core library, we suggest opening a [new discussion](https://github.com/GrossfieldLab/loos/discussions) topic before you put much time into implementation -- we will almost certainly have suggestions about how to design it so it matches the rest of the library.