--- /dev/null
+# Contributing
+
+Thank you for being interested in contributing to Starlette.
+There are many ways you can contribute to the project:
+
+- Try Starlette and [report bugs/issues you find](https://github.com/encode/starlette/issues/new)
+- [Implement new features](https://github.com/encode/starlette/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22)
+- [Review Pull Requests of others](https://github.com/encode/starlette/pulls)
+- Write documentation
+- Participate in discussions
+
+## Reporting Bugs or Other Issues
+
+Found something that Starlette should support?
+Stumbled upon some unexpected behaviour?
+
+Contributions should generally start out with [a discussion](https://github.com/encode/starlette/discussions).
+Possible bugs may be raised as a "Potential Issue" discussion, feature requests may
+be raised as an "Ideas" discussion. We can then determine if the discussion needs
+to be escalated into an "Issue" or not, or if we'd consider a pull request.
+
+Try to be more descriptive as you can and in case of a bug report,
+provide as much information as possible like:
+
+- OS platform
+- Python version
+- Installed dependencies and versions (`python -m pip freeze`)
+- Code snippet
+- Error traceback
+
+You should always try to reduce any examples to the *simplest possible case*
+that demonstrates the issue.
+
+## Development
+
+To start developing Starlette, create a **fork** of the
+[Starlette repository](https://github.com/encode/starlette) on GitHub.
+
+Then clone your fork with the following command replacing `YOUR-USERNAME` with
+your GitHub username:
+
+```shell
+$ git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/starlette
+```
+
+You can now install the project and its dependencies using:
+
+```shell
+$ cd starlette
+$ scripts/install
+```
+
+## Testing and Linting
+
+We use custom shell scripts to automate testing, linting,
+and documentation building workflow.
+
+To run the tests, use:
+
+```shell
+$ scripts/test
+```
+
+Any additional arguments will be passed to `pytest`. See the [pytest documentation](https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/how-to/usage.html) for more information.
+
+For example, to run a single test script:
+
+```shell
+$ scripts/test tests/test_application.py
+```
+
+To run the code auto-formatting:
+
+```shell
+$ scripts/lint
+```
+
+Lastly, to run code checks separately (they are also run as part of `scripts/test`), run:
+
+```shell
+$ scripts/check
+```
+
+## Documenting
+
+Documentation pages are located under the `docs/` folder.
+
+To run the documentation site locally (useful for previewing changes), use:
+
+```shell
+$ scripts/docs
+```
+
+## Resolving Build / CI Failures
+
+Once you've submitted your pull request, the test suite will automatically run, and the results will show up in GitHub.
+If the test suite fails, you'll want to click through to the "Details" link, and try to identify why the test suite failed.
+
+<p align="center" style="margin: 0 0 10px">
+ <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/encode/starlette/master/docs/img/gh-actions-fail.png" alt='Failing PR commit status'>
+</p>
+
+Here are some common ways the test suite can fail:
+
+### Check Job Failed
+
+<p align="center" style="margin: 0 0 10px">
+ <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/encode/starlette/master/docs/img/gh-actions-fail-check.png" alt='Failing GitHub action lint job'>
+</p>
+
+This job failing means there is either a code formatting issue or type-annotation issue.
+You can look at the job output to figure out why it's failed or within a shell run:
+
+```shell
+$ scripts/check
+```
+
+It may be worth it to run `$ scripts/lint` to attempt auto-formatting the code
+and if that job succeeds commit the changes.
+
+### Docs Job Failed
+
+This job failing means the documentation failed to build. This can happen for
+a variety of reasons like invalid markdown or missing configuration within `mkdocs.yml`.
+
+### Python 3.X Job Failed
+
+<p align="center" style="margin: 0 0 10px">
+ <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/encode/starlette/master/docs/img/gh-actions-fail-test.png" alt='Failing GitHub action test job'>
+</p>
+
+This job failing means the unit tests failed or not all code paths are covered by unit tests.
+
+If tests are failing you will see this message under the coverage report:
+
+`=== 1 failed, 435 passed, 1 skipped, 1 xfailed in 11.09s ===`
+
+If tests succeed but coverage doesn't reach our current threshold, you will see this
+message under the coverage report:
+
+`FAIL Required test coverage of 100% not reached. Total coverage: 99.00%`
+
+## Releasing
+
+*This section is targeted at Starlette maintainers.*
+
+Before releasing a new version, create a pull request that includes:
+
+- **An update to the changelog**:
+ - We follow the format from [keepachangelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/).
+ - [Compare](https://github.com/encode/starlette/compare/) `master` with the tag of the latest release, and list all entries that are of interest to our users:
+ - Things that **must** go in the changelog: added, changed, deprecated or removed features, and bug fixes.
+ - Things that **should not** go in the changelog: changes to documentation, tests or tooling.
+ - Try sorting entries in descending order of impact / importance.
+ - Keep it concise and to-the-point. 🎯
+- **A version bump**: see `__version__.py`.
+
+For an example, see [#1600](https://github.com/encode/starlette/pull/1600).
+
+Once the release PR is merged, create a
+[new release](https://github.com/encode/starlette/releases/new) including:
+
+- Tag version like `0.13.3`.
+- Release title `Version 0.13.3`
+- Description copied from the changelog.
+
+Once created this release will be automatically uploaded to PyPI.
+
+If something goes wrong with the PyPI job the release can be published using the
+`scripts/publish` script.