## Summary
* As many of us have experienced, the use of AI coding agents (Claude,
Cursor, Copilot) in our daily workflows is no longer a hypothetical—it
is a reality. While these tools can significantly accelerate
development, they also pose a unique risk to a project like CrossPoint
Reader, where our hardware constraints (ESP32-C3 with ~380KB RAM) are
extremely tight.
* AI models often "hallucinate" APIs or suggest high-level C++ patterns
(like std::string or heavy heap usage) that are detrimental to our
memory-constrained environment.
* To address this, I am proposing the introduction of an AI Agent
Guidance File (.skills/SKILL.md recognized by many AI systems). This
file acts as a "Constitutional Document" for AI agents, forcing them to
adhere to our specific engineering rigors before they generate a single
line of code.
## Additional Context
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**PARTIALLY**_ Asked
several Ai systems about their needs, added my own 5 cents of nuisances
I faced
## Summary
* **What is the goal of this PR?** KOReader sync on a German-language
book would fail with an out-of-memory error when trying to open the
destination chapter after applying remote progress. The root cause was a
chain of two independent bugs that combined to exhaust the contiguous
heap needed by the EPUB inflate pipeline.
* **What changes are included?**
## Fix 1 — Hyphenation heap defragmentation (LiangHyphenation.cpp)
### What was happening
AugmentedWord, the internal struct used during Liang pattern matching,
held three std::vector<> members (bytes, charByteOffsets,
byteToCharIndex) plus a separate scores vector — a total of 4 heap
allocations per word during page layout. For a German-language section
with hundreds of words, thousands of small malloc/free cycles fragmented
the heap. Total free memory was adequate (~108 KB) but the largest
contiguous block shrank well below the 32 KB needed for the INFLATE ring
buffer used during EPUB decompression. The failure was invisible with
hyphenation disabled, where MaxAlloc stayed at ~77 KB; enabling German
hyphenation silently destroyed the contiguity the allocator needed.
### What changed
The three std::vector<> members of AugmentedWord and the scores vector
are replaced with fixed-size C arrays on the render-task stack:
```
uint8_t bytes[160] // was std::vector<uint8_t>
size_t charByteOffsets[70] // was std::vector<size_t>
int32_t byteToCharIndex[160] // was std::vector<int32_t>
uint8_t scores[70] // was std::vector<uint8_t> (local in liangBreakIndexes)
```
Sizing is based on the longest known German word (~63 codepoints × 2
UTF-8 bytes + 2 sentinel dots = 128 bytes); MAX_WORD_BYTES=160 and
MAX_WORD_CHARS=70 give comfortable headroom. The same analysis holds for
all seven supported languages (en, fr, de, es, it, ru, uk) — every
accepted letter encodes to at most 2 UTF-8 bytes after case-folding.
Words exceeding the limits are silently skipped (no hyphenation
applied), which is correct behaviour. The struct lives on the 8 KB
render-task stack so no permanent DRAM is consumed.
Verification: after the fix, MaxAlloc reads 77,812 bytes with German
hyphenation enabled — identical to the figure previously achievable only
with hyphenation off.
## Fix 2 — WiFi lifecycle in KOReaderSyncActivity
(KOReaderSyncActivity.cpp)
### What was happening
onEnter() called WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA) unconditionally before delegating
to WifiSelectionActivity. WifiSelectionActivity manages WiFi mode
internally (it calls WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA) again at scan start and at
connection attempt). The pre-emptive call from KOReaderSyncActivity
interfered with the sub-activity's own state machine, causing
intermittent connection failures that were difficult to reproduce.
Additionally, WiFi was only shut down in onExit(). If the user chose
"Apply remote progress" the activity exited without turning WiFi off
first, leaving the radio on and its memory allocated while the EPUB was
being decompressed — unnecessarily consuming the contiguous heap
headroom that inflate needed.
### What changed
* WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA) removed from onEnter(). WifiSelectionActivity owns
WiFi mode; KOReaderSyncActivity should not touch it before the
sub-activity runs.
* A wifiOff() helper (SNTP stop + disconnect + WIFI_OFF with settling
delays) is extracted into the anonymous namespace and called at every
web-session exit point:
- "Apply remote" path in loop() — before onSyncComplete()
- performUpload() success path
- performUpload() failure path
- onExit() (safety net for all other exit paths)
## Additional Context
* Add any other information that might be helpful for the reviewer
(e.g., performance implications, potential risks,
specific areas to focus on).
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**YES**_ and two days of
blood, sweat and heavy swearing...
## Summary
* **What is the goal of this PR?** During low memory situations (which I
encounterde a lot during my recent bugfixing activities) a cover was
considered rendered even if the buffer could not be stored.
* **What changes are included?** Proper assignment of flag logic
## Additional Context
-
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**NO**_
## Summary
* **What is the goal of this PR?** During debugging of #1092 i
desperately needed to monitor the biggest allocatable block of memory on
the heap
* **What changes are included?** Added informaqtion to debug output,
amended monitor utility to pick it up
## Additional Context
---
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**NO**_
## Summary
* platformio.ini is a repository based config for platformio and cannot
be modified without constant nagging of git to include it into you
commits
* PlatformIO allows you to split your configuration into multiple files
using the extra_configs option in the [platformio] block. This
effectively merges other .ini files into your main one. This will be
silently ignored if such a file does not exist
## Additional Context
* Modifiy platformio.ini and add a .gitignore entry to ignore your local
config
* eg my own ``platformio.local.ini``:
```
[env:custom]
extends = base
build_flags =
${base.build_flags}
-DCROSSPOINT_VERSION=\"${crosspoint.version}-custom\"
; inclusion of additional fonts is disabled in custom builds to save space
-DOMIT_FONTS
```
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _NO_
---------
Co-authored-by: Dave Allie <dave@daveallie.com>
## Summary
* This PR introduces a migration from binary file storage to JSON-based
storage for application settings, state, and various credential stores.
This improves readability, maintainability, and allows for easier manual
configuration editing.
* Benefits:
- Settings files are now JSON and can be easily read/edited manually
- Easier to inspect application state and settings during development
- JSON structure is more flexible for future changes
* Drawback: around 15k of additional flash usage
* Compatibility: Seamless migration preserves existing user data
## Additional Context
1. New JSON I/O Infrastructure files:
- JsonSettingsIO: Core JSON serialization/deserialization logic using
ArduinoJson library
- ObfuscationUtils: XOR-based password obfuscation for sensitive data
2. Migrated Components (now use JSON storage with automatic binary
migration):
- CrossPointSettings (settings.json): Main application settings
- CrossPointState (state.json): Application state (open book, sleep
mode, etc.)
- WifiCredentialStore (wifi.json): WiFi network credentials (Password
Obfuscation: Sensitive data like WiFi passwords, uses XOR encryption
with fixed keys. Note: This is obfuscation, not cryptographic security -
passwords can be recovered with the key)
- KOReaderCredentialStore (koreader.json): KOReader sync credentials
- RecentBooksStore (recent.json): Recently opened books list
3. Migration Logic
- Forward Compatibility: New installations use JSON format
- Backward Compatibility: Existing binary files are automatically
migrated to JSON on first load
- Backup Safety: Original binary files are renamed with .bak extension
after successful migration
- Fallback Handling: If JSON parsing fails, system falls back to binary
loading
4. Infrastructure Updates
- HalStorage: Added rename() method for backup operations
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _** YES**_
---------
Co-authored-by: Dave Allie <dave@daveallie.com>
## Summary
* This PR fixes decomposed diacritic handling end-to-end:
- Hyphenation: normalize common Latin base+combining sequences to
precomposed codepoints before Liang pattern matching, so decomposed
words hyphenate correctly
- Rendering: correct combining-mark placement logic so non-spacing marks
are attached to the preceding base glyph in normal and rotated text
rendering paths, with corresponding text-bounds consistency updates.
- Hyphenation around non breaking space variants have been fixed (and
extended)
- Hyphenation of terms that already included of hyphens were fixed to
include Liang pattern application (eg "US-Satellitensystem" was
*exclusively* broken at the existing hyphen)
## Additional Context
* Before
<img width="800" height="480" alt="2"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b9c515c4-ab75-45cc-8b52-f4d86bce519d"
/>
* After
<img width="480" height="800" alt="fix1"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4999f6a8-f51c-4c0a-b144-f153f77ddb57"
/>
<img width="800" height="480" alt="fix2"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7355126b-80c7-441f-b390-4e0897ee3fb6"
/>
* Note 1: the hyphenation fix is not a 100% bullet proof implementation.
It adds composition of *common* base+combining sequences (e.g. O +
U+0308 -> Ö) during codepoint collection. A complete solution would
require implementing proper Unicode normalization (at least NFC,
possibly NFKC in specific cases) before hyphenation and rendering,
instead of hand-mapping a few combining marks. That was beyond the scope
of this fix.
* Note 2: the render fix should be universal and not limited to the
constraints outlined above: it properly x-centers the compund glyph over
the previous one, and it uses at least 1pt of visual distance in y.
Before:
<img width="478" height="167" alt="Image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f8db60d5-35b1-4477-96d0-5003b4e4a2a1"
/>
After:
<img width="479" height="180" alt="Image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1b48ef97-3a77-475a-8522-23f4aca8e904"
/>
* This should resolve the issues described in #998
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**PARTIALLY**_
## Summary
* This PR fixes decomposed diacritic handling end-to-end:
- Hyphenation: normalize common Latin base+combining sequences to
precomposed codepoints before Liang pattern matching, so decomposed
words hyphenate correctly
- Rendering: correct combining-mark placement logic so non-spacing marks
are attached to the preceding base glyph in normal and rotated text
rendering paths, with corresponding text-bounds consistency updates.
- Hyphenation around non breaking space variants have been fixed (and
extended)
- Hyphenation of terms that already included of hyphens were fixed to
include Liang pattern application (eg "US-Satellitensystem" was
*exclusively* broken at the existing hyphen)
## Additional Context
* Before
<img width="800" height="480" alt="2"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b9c515c4-ab75-45cc-8b52-f4d86bce519d"
/>
* After
<img width="480" height="800" alt="fix1"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4999f6a8-f51c-4c0a-b144-f153f77ddb57"
/>
<img width="800" height="480" alt="fix2"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7355126b-80c7-441f-b390-4e0897ee3fb6"
/>
* Note 1: the hyphenation fix is not a 100% bullet proof implementation.
It adds composition of *common* base+combining sequences (e.g. O +
U+0308 -> Ö) during codepoint collection. A complete solution would
require implementing proper Unicode normalization (at least NFC,
possibly NFKC in specific cases) before hyphenation and rendering,
instead of hand-mapping a few combining marks. That was beyond the scope
of this fix.
* Note 2: the render fix should be universal and not limited to the
constraints outlined above: it properly x-centers the compund glyph over
the previous one, and it uses at least 1pt of visual distance in y.
Before:
<img width="478" height="167" alt="Image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f8db60d5-35b1-4477-96d0-5003b4e4a2a1"
/>
After:
<img width="479" height="180" alt="Image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1b48ef97-3a77-475a-8522-23f4aca8e904"
/>
* This should resolve the issues described in #998
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**PARTIALLY**_
## Summary
* ``renderChar`` checked ``is2Bit`` on every pixel inside the inner
loop, even though the value is constant for the lifetime of a single
glyph
* Moved the branch above both loops so each path (2-bit antialiased /
1-bit monochrome) runs without a per-pixel conditional
* Eliminates redundant work in the two inner loops that render font
glyphs to the frame buffer, targeting ``renderChar`` and
``drawTextRotated90CW`` in ``GfxRenderer.cpp``
## Additional Context
* Measured on device using a dedicated framebuffer benchmark (no display
refresh). 100 repetitions of "The quick brown fox jumps".
| Test | Before | After | Change |
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|---------|
| drawText UI12 | 1,337 µs/call | 1,024 µs/call | −23%|
| drawText Bookerly14 | 2.174 µs / call | 1,847 µs/call | −15% |
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**PARTIALLY**_ Claude did
the analysis and wrote the benchmarks
## Summary
* ``renderChar`` checked ``is2Bit`` on every pixel inside the inner
loop, even though the value is constant for the lifetime of a single
glyph
* Moved the branch above both loops so each path (2-bit antialiased /
1-bit monochrome) runs without a per-pixel conditional
* Eliminates redundant work in the two inner loops that render font
glyphs to the frame buffer, targeting ``renderChar`` and
``drawTextRotated90CW`` in ``GfxRenderer.cpp``
## Additional Context
* Measured on device using a dedicated framebuffer benchmark (no display
refresh). 100 repetitions of "The quick brown fox jumps".
| Test | Before | After | Change |
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|---------|
| drawText UI12 | 1,337 µs/call | 1,024 µs/call | −23%|
| drawText Bookerly14 | 2.174 µs / call | 1,847 µs/call | −15% |
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**PARTIALLY**_ Claude did
the analysis and wrote the benchmarks
## Summary
* What is the goal of this PR?
- Allow users to create custom sleep screen images with standard tools
(ImageMagick, GIMP, etc.) that render cleanly on the e-ink display
without dithering artifacts. Previously, avoiding dithering required
non-standard 2-bit BMPs that no standard image editor can produce. ( see
issue #931 )
* What changes are included?
- Add 4-bit BMP format support to Bitmap.cpp (standard format, widely
supported by image tools)
- Auto-detect "native palette" images: if a BMP has ≤4 palette entries
and all luminances map within ±21 of the display's native gray levels
(0, 85, 170, 255), skip dithering entirely and direct-map pixels
- Clarify pixel processing strategy with three distinct paths:
error-diffusion dithering, simple quantization, or direct mapping
- Add scripts/generate_test_bmps.py for generating test images across
all supported BMP formats
## Additional Context
* The e-ink display has 4 native gray levels. When a BMP already uses
exactly those levels, dithering adds noise to what should be clean
output. The native palette detection uses a ±21 tolerance (~10%) to
handle slight rounding from color space conversions in image tools.
Users can now create a 4-color grayscale BMP with (imagemagic example):
```
convert input.png -colorspace Gray -colors 4 -depth
```
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _** YES**_
## Summary
- `UITheme::currentTheme` was a raw owning pointer with no destructor,
causing a heap leak every time `setTheme()` was called (e.g. on
theme change via settings reload)
## Additional Context
- Replaced `const BaseTheme*` with `std::unique_ptr<BaseTheme>` so the
previous theme object is automatically deleted on reassignment
- Added `<memory>` include to `UITheme.h`; allocations updated to
`std::make_unique<>` in `UITheme.cpp`
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**NO**_ (identified by
claude though)
---------
Co-authored-by: Dave Allie <dave@daveallie.com>
## Summary
* GfxRender did handle horizontal and vertical lines but had a TODO for
arbitrary lines.
* Added integer based Bresenham line drawing
## Additional Context
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**NO**_
## Summary
* Original implementation had inconsistent positioning logic:
- When XPath parsing succeeded: incorrectly set pageNumber = 0 (always
beginning of chapter)
- When XPath parsing failed: used percentage for positioning (worked
correctly)
- Result: Positions restored to wrong locations depending on XPath
parsing success
- Mentioned in Issue #581
* Solution
- Unified ProgressMapper::toCrossPoint() to use percentage-based
positioning exclusively for both spine identification and intra-chapter
page calculation, eliminating unreliable XPath parsing entirely.
## Additional Context
* ProgressMapper.cpp: Simplified toCrossPoint() to always use percentage
for positioning, removed parseDocFragmentIndex() function
* ProgressMapper.h: Updated comments and removed unused function
declaration
* Tests confirmed appropriate positioning
* __Notabene: the syncing to another device will (most probably) end up
at the current chapter of crosspoints reading position. There is not
much we can do about it, as KOReader needs to have the correct XPath
information - we can only provide an apporximate position (plus
percentage) - the percentage information is not used in KOReaders
current implementation__
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? YES
## Summary
* During chapter parsing, every <img> tag triggered ZIP decompression
and an SD card write regardless of whether the image format was
supported. The mandatory delay(50) after each SD write compounded the
cost. A chapter with 6 GIF images (a common decorative element in older
EPUBs) wasted ~750 ms before any text rendering began.
* **What changes are included?**
Added an ``ImageDecoderFactory::isFormatSupported()`` check before any
file I/O in the img-handler. Only JPEG and PNG proceed to extraction;
all other formats (GIF, SVG, WebP, etc.) fall through immediately to
alt-text rendering with no SD card access.
## Additional Context
Measured impact on a representative chapter with 6 GIF decorations:
| | Before | After|
|-- | -- | --|
|Total parse time | ~882 ms | ~207 ms|
|Image handling | ~750 ms | ~76 ms|
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _**NO**_
## Summary
* I am getting miniz warning during compilation: "Using fopen, ftello,
fseeko, stat() etc. path for file I/O - this path may not support large
files."
* Disable the io module from miniz as it is not used and get rid of the
warning
## Additional Context
* the ZipFile.cpp implementation only uses tinfl_decompressor,
tinfl_init(), and tinfl_decompress() (low-level API) and does all ZIP
file parsing manually using SD card file I/O
* it never uses miniz's high-level file functions like
mz_zip_reader_init_file()
* so we can disable Miniz io-stack be setting MINIZ_NO_STDIO to 1
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? partially, let claude
inspect the codebase
## Summary
* If an EPUB has:
```
<dc:creator>J.R.R. Tolkien</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Christopher Tolkien</dc:creator>
```
the current result for epub.author would provide : "J.R.R.
TolkienChristopher Tolkien" (no separator!)
* The fix will seperate multiple authors: "J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher
Tolkien"
## Additional Context
* Simple fix in ContentOpfParser - I am not seeing any dependence on the
wrong concatenated result.
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? NO
## Summary
* The constant SETTINGS_CONST was hardcoded and needed to be updated
whenever an additional setting was added
* This is no longer necessary as the settings size will be determined
automatically on settings persistence
## Additional Context
* New settings need to be added (as previously) in saveToFile - that's
it
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? YES
---------
Co-authored-by: Xuan Son Nguyen <son@huggingface.co>
## Summary
* Definition and use of a central LOG function, that can later be
extended or completely be removed (for public use where debugging
information may not be required) to save flash by suppressing the
-DENABLE_SERIAL_LOG like in the slim branch
* **What changes are included?**
## Additional Context
* By using the central logger the usual:
```
#include <HardwareSerial.h>
...
Serial.printf("[%lu] [WCS] Obfuscating/deobfuscating %zu bytes\n", millis(), data.size());
```
would then become
```
#include <Logging.h>
...
LOG_DBG("WCS", "Obfuscating/deobfuscating %zu bytes", data.size());
```
You do have ``LOG_DBG`` for debug messages, ``LOG_ERR`` for error
messages and ``LOG_INF`` for informational messages. Depending on the
verbosity level defined (see below) soe of these message types will be
suppressed/not-compiled.
* The normal compilation (default) will create a firmware.elf file of
42.194.356 bytes, the same code via slim will create 42.024.048 bytes -
170.308 bytes less
* Firmware.bin : 6.469.984 bytes for default, 6.418.672 bytes for slim -
51.312 bytes less
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? _NO_
---------
Co-authored-by: Xuan Son Nguyen <son@huggingface.co>
## Summary
* Add a small loop in main to be able to receive external commands,
currently being sent via the debugging_monitor
* Implemented command: cmd:SCREENSHOT sends the currently displayed
screen to the monitor, which will then store it to screenshot.bmp
## Additional Context
I was getting annoyed with taking tilted/unsharp photos of the device
screen, so I added the ability to press Enter during the monitor
execution and type SCREENSHOT to send a command. Could be extended in
the future
[screenshot.bmp](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/25213230/screenshot.bmp)
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? No
## Summary
* Unify all serial port debug messages
## Additional Context
* All messages sent to the serial port now follow the "[timestamp]
[origin] payload" format (notable exception framework messages)
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? No
## Summary
* I needed the ability to filter and or suppress debug messages
containig certain keywords (eg [GFX] for render related stuff)
* Update of debugging_monitor.py script for development work
## Additional Context
```
usage: debugging_monitor.py [-h] [--baud BAUD] [--filter FILTER] [--suppress SUPPRESS] [port]
ESP32 Monitor with Graph
positional arguments:
port Serial port
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--baud BAUD Baud rate
--filter FILTER Only display lines containing this keyword (case-insensitive)
--suppress SUPPRESS Suppress lines containing this keyword (case-insensitive)
```
* plus a couple of platform specific defaults (port, pip style)
---
### AI Usage
While CrossPoint doesn't have restrictions on AI tools in contributing,
please be transparent about their usage as it
helps set the right context for reviewers.
Did you use AI tools to help write this code? NO