[mikestankavich]

Every command in the getting-started path was dead. A stranger following CONTRIBUTING.md failed at step 4 and never reached step 5. These are public repos, so that path is the first thing an outside contributor touches.

Stacked on #620. Base is chore/tra-1128-align-ignore-block-and-split-process-doc, not main, because #620 also edits CONTRIBUTING.md and branching from main would conflict on merge. Merge #620 first, then this retargets to main cleanly.

What was broken

The Quick Setup described an architecture the repo left behind — raw docker-compose plus go run cmd/migrate/main.go, predating just, direnv and the bootstrap step. Each of these was checked against the tree rather than assumed:

Documented	Reality
cp backend/.env.example backend/.env	no such file, and no env sample in that directory
cp frontend/.env.example frontend/.env	same
go run cmd/migrate/main.go up	no such path; migrations run through just
go test ./tests/integration -tags=integration	no such directory; integration tests are in-package behind a build tag
go run cmd/server/main.go	no such path; the entrypoint is backend/main.go
cd tests/api && pnpm test	there is no top-level tests/ directory at all

just was not listed as a required tool, despite being the entry point for every workflow in the repo. Neither was direnv. pnpm appeared only as "Node.js 18+", though the repo uses pnpm exclusively and pins pnpm@9.12.3.

What it says now

The path the README documents and the justfile implements: configure .env.local, just bootstrap, just dev, just test. Every recipe and file named in the new text was confirmed to exist, including just backend test-integration and just test-contract.

The env explanation points at the README rather than restating it — there is one local env file holding connection parts, and duplicating that here would create the second source of truth this file already suffers from.

Also corrected — found by auditing the whole file

Fixing only the reported lines is how a file ends up correct at two points and wrong everywhere else, so the rest got the same treatment:

• Adding an API endpoint pointed at backend/api/routes.go. The router is backend/internal/cmd/serve/router.go.
• Database changes pointed at database/migrations/; it is backend/migrations/. The step that makes CI pass — just backend migrate-checksums — was missing entirely, so a contributor following this guide would land a migration that fails CI with no indication why.
• The frontend section described Redux and Storybook. Neither is a dependency. The app uses zustand and TanStack Query.

Left alone deliberately

"Test the migration up and down" reads like more of the same rot, and it is correct — down migrations are still written, including for all four most recent. Checked before editing rather than swept up with the rest.

Verification

• just validate — exit 0
• Every repo path referenced in the file now resolves; audited by extracting and testing each one
• Every just recipe named was confirmed present in just --list

What this does not fix

The underlying cause, which is item 3 on TRA-1219: nothing reads CONTRIBUTING.md. No gate, no session, no CI, and evidently no human since those env files stopped existing. This PR resets it to true; without a consumer it will drift again, and the next person to notice will be an outside contributor rather than us.

Refs: TRA-1219

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01W7p2hFrE6ZFWS91XvyFQcV