diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4f0086
--- /dev/null
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+# Contributing to Bookmark
+
+Bookmark is an early-stage, fully open-source tool built for Books in Hand,
+a nonprofit that keeps books out of landfills. It's still scaffolding —
+there's no working end-to-end app yet, so the best contributions right now
+are small, focused, and coordinated first.
+
+## Before You Start
+
+This project is young enough that priorities can shift quickly. Please open
+an issue (or comment on an existing one) describing what you'd like to work
+on before submitting a large pull request — it avoids duplicated effort and
+makes sure the change fits the current phase of the build.
+
+See `CLAUDE.md` (also readable as `AGENTS.md`) in the repo root for full
+architecture and design context, including what's in scope for the current
+phase and what's intentionally deferred.
+
+## Ground Rules
+
+- **Deterministic where it matters.** Size-bucketing (small/medium/large)
+  feeds the nonprofit's tax and 501(c)(3) reporting. It must stay
+  geometry/visibility-based — never OCR, ML, or LLM-derived. Don't change
+  this without understanding why.
+- **No cloud dependencies in the current phase.** Keep the intake pipeline
+  fully local.
+- **Say what the mechanism actually is.** Use precise terms — "LLM",
+  "vision-LLM (VLM)", "OCR", "barcode decode" — rather than the generic
+  word "AI" in code, comments, docs, or UI copy.
+- **Human review before publish.** Any future LLM/VLM-assisted output
+  (e.g. cover text extraction) is a draft for a human to approve, never
+  auto-published.
+
+## Development Workflow
+
+```bash
+python -m venv .venv
+.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
+.venv/bin/pytest -v
+```
+
+This project follows test-driven development — new modules should ship
+with tests under `tests/` that don't require real camera hardware
+(synthetic frames, mocked `cv2.VideoCapture`, `TestClient` for the API).
+
+## Commit Style
+
+Conventional-commit-style subjects: `feat:`, `fix:`, `docs:`, `chore:`,
+`test:`, `refactor:`. Keep commits small and focused — one logical change
+per commit.
+
+## Submitting Changes
+
+1. Fork the repo and create a branch for your change.
+2. Make sure `pytest -v` passes.
+3. Open a pull request describing what changed and why.
+4. Be patient — this is a volunteer-maintained nonprofit project, so review
+   may take a few days.
+
+## Questions
+
+Open an issue — it's the best way to reach the maintainers and keeps
+context visible for future contributors.
diff --git a/LICENSE b/LICENSE
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e683d52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2026 Books in Hand
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index dcf9d41..d3bcedc 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ name = "bookmark"
 version = "0.1.0"
 description = "Book intake and checkout inventory system for Books in Hand"
 requires-python = ">=3.11"
+license = "MIT"
 dependencies = [
     "fastapi>=0.110",
     "uvicorn[standard]>=0.29",