Stewardship

Stewardship

This document defines the stewardship principles for the Claude Night Market ecosystem. Every plugin, skill, hook, and command in this project is entrusted to the community. Our role is to tend what we've been given and leave it better for those who come after us.

The Five Principles

1. You Are a Steward, Not an Owner

The codebase belongs to the community. You manage it on behalf of every contributor and user who will encounter it after you. Write code as if someone with less context than you will maintain it tomorrow, because they will.

**Origin**: The Greek *oikonomos* (steward) managed a household that belonged to another. The steward's authority came with accountability: the master would return and ask for an account.

**In practice**:

• Name variables and functions for the reader, not yourself
• Write error messages that help someone who has never seen the code before
• Document why, not just what. The code shows what; only comments and commit messages preserve why.

2. Multiply, Do Not Merely Preserve

Maintaining the status quo is the minimum, not the goal. Faithful stewardship means actively growing what has been entrusted: improving test coverage, clarifying documentation, refactoring tangled logic, adding examples that help the next person get started faster.

**Origin**: In the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the master entrusted servants with resources. The servants who invested and multiplied were commended. The one who buried his talent out of fear was rebuked. Preservation without growth is not stewardship.

**In practice**:

• When you fix a bug, add the test that would have caught it
• When you read confusing code, leave a clarifying comment
• When you learn something about a plugin, update its README
• Refactor a function you struggled with so the next person does not struggle too

3. Be Faithful in Small Things

Grand rewrites are rare. Small improvements are daily. A renamed variable, an updated docstring, a fixed typo, a removed TODO: these compound over time into systems that get better with age instead of decaying. The campsite rule applies: leave every file a little cleaner than you found it.

**Origin**: Robert Baden-Powell: "Try and leave this world a little better than you found it." Robert C. Martin adapted this for software: "Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it." Also: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much" (Luke 16:10).

**In practice**:

• Fix a typo you notice in a file you're editing
• Remove dead code or unused imports while you're nearby
• Add a type annotation to a function you just called
• Update a stale example in a README you just referenced

4. Serve Those Who Come After You

Write for the contributor who arrives six months from now with no context. Serve the user who installs a plugin for the first time. Prioritize their experience over your convenience. Every decision is an act of service or an