synodic.core

Ship a `changelogs/changelog.yaml` — the structured form `antsibull-changelog` generates and the `ansible` package consumes — rather than only a hand-maintained `CHANGELOG.md`, and write a fragment into `changelogs/fragments/` as each change lands rather than reconstructing release notes at release time. Both have to be inside the published tarball to be observable: a changelog that lives only in your Git repository is one we cannot read. This is the single highest-leverage change for most collections, because the same missing file is what holds down both changelog rules in this rubric. If you already publish `changelog.yaml` with fragments, this rule is answered.

Ship your README and your `docs/` directory INSIDE the published tarball, not only in your Git repository — we do not read repositories at all yet, so a file that exists only there is a file we cannot see. If your `build_ignore` excludes `docs/`, that exclusion is why we observed nothing. Beyond the README this rule counts documentation FILES, so splitting a long README into per-module and per-role pages is what moves it; adding filler pages to raise a count would satisfy the arithmetic and help nobody.

Cut a release to Galaxy. This is the heaviest single rule in the rubric because a release is the one unambiguous, publisher-controlled act of maintenance we can observe without reading your repository — which is also its limitation, and worth saying plainly: a collection under active development that rarely releases is under-credited here, and that is a gap in what we can see rather than a judgement about the work. If your collection is finished rather than abandoned, there is nothing here you should change on our account.

Declare a machine-readable SPDX identifier in `galaxy.yml`’s `license` field rather than relying on a `LICENSE` file alone: an identifier is what a consuming organisation’s policy tooling reads without a human opening the file. A `LICENSES/` directory following REUSE ranks above a bare root licence file and below the identifier. One exception worth stating: we record the identifier you publish rather than validating it against the SPDX list, so a wrong identifier will earn these marks and mislead your users at the same time — if no SPDX identifier fits your licence, publish the file instead.

Declare the link fields your collection actually has in `galaxy.yml` — `repository`, `documentation`, `homepage` and `issues` — and correct any we reported as unparseable, which is usually a stray character rather than a wrong address. This is a metadata edit: we never fetch what is behind these URLs, so nothing about your hosting is being graded. Do not invent a URL to fill a field — a scaffolding placeholder left where it was born is shown on your page as the placeholder it is, and an honestly empty field reads better than a link that goes nowhere.

Publish your test evidence inside the artifact: `molecule/` scenarios for a role collection, and `tests/unit/`, `tests/integration/` and `tests/sanity/` for a plugin collection. Ansible’s own packaging documentation suggests excluding `tests/` through `build_ignore`, so if you follow that advice we simply cannot see them — their absence from your tarball is a limit on what we read and never a claim that you have no tests. In this scoring version this rule can only add points: when we observe no test evidence the rule leaves your calculation entirely rather than scoring zero, so publishing tests can raise your score and withholding them cannot lower it.

Publish your CI configuration inside the artifact. `.github/workflows/` is what we count most precisely, and other CI config files earn partial credit when your automation runs somewhere we cannot enumerate as exactly. `build_ignore` commonly strips `.github/`, again on the packaging documentation’s own advice, so an absence here is a gap in what we could read rather than a statement that your collection has no CI. In this scoring version this rule can only add points: an unobserved CI signal leaves your calculation rather than scoring zero, so this is worth doing for the credit and never to avoid a deduction.