add contributing.md

Signed-off-by: Benji Visser <[email protected]>

.github/contributing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+# Contributing
+
+### Publishing on Npm
+
+We manage _what_ gets merged _when_ using the pull request labels `release` and `prerelease`.
+
+When the `prerelease` label is added to a pull request:
+
+- the version in the package.json is verified, asserting that it is greater than the version in the main branch and includes a prerelease suffix (_e.g 1.2.3-rc.1_)
+- the package is published to NPM with the `--next` tag. The next tag is how alpha and beta package versions are published to NPM. When a developer runs `npm install @vesselapi/integrations` versions with the next tag are ignored -- unless they are specifically specified `npm install @vesselapi/[email protected]`.
+
+When the `release` label is added to a pull request:
+
+- the version in the package.json is verified, asserting that it is greater than the version in the main branch and does not include a prerelease suffix
+
+When no release label is provided github actions verifies that the version has not changed so versions of the package are not published erroneously.