feat: v1 of contributing guidelines

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+## LTER Scientific Computing Contributing Guidelines
+
+This document is meant to focus primarily on our _internal_ processes for contributing. If you're not a member of this team, we hope you find this document valuable as-is but you should also feel free to make any modifications you feel are necessary if you choose to use our guidelines as a starting place.
+
+### Version Control & GitHub
+
+As much as possible, use the style of "[Conventional Commits](https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/)" in your commit messages. See [here](https://njlyon0.github.io/tips/commits.html) for a nice summary of the highlights of that approach.
+
+For **minor changes**, (1) communicate with the team to avoid merge conflicts and (2) make commits directly to `main`
+
+For **_major_ changes**, (1) communicate with the team to avoid merge conflicts, (2) open a branch with an intuitive but concise name, and (3) open a pull request when you are confident your edits are largely complete. (4) Request a review from a teammate, (5) make any edits they suggest, (6) merge the PR, and (7) delete the branch.