# Tool Library Guidelines

The Light operating system, LightOS, is built around intentionality & privacy.

We are so grateful for your interest in building custom tools for the LightOS and contributing that work to our community Tool Library.

Our users trust Light to safeguard the LightOS, so it is essential for us to review the tools that are submitted to ensure nothing jeopardizes what makes going light so special. We wanted to put together some guidelines to help developers understand what we think makes sense for accepting a tool to the public Tool Library. You can of course share your tools as you see fit outside of our Tool Library, and there are some cool unofficial collections being put together.

## Intentionality

Tools must have a clear objective and be designed for intentional use. A tool should not make a user feel the need to check and re-check the tool time and time again throughout the day. There are no infinite feeds in LightOS tools.

## Privacy

This should be a given, but the tool must respect user privacy: no analytics, tracking, or collecting of user data, and clear disclosure of any data that leaves the device.

## No Advertising

There is no advertising permitted in any LightOS tool. We reject the attention economy of many smartphone apps today.

## Open Source

In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, every tool submitted must be open-sourced for anyone to review and build off of.

## SDK Compliance

Tools must be built using the provided LightOS SDK.

## Design

This is the most subjective requirement, but we want the tools to follow the existing LightOS design philosophy for a cohesive user experience. Design feedback may or may not disqualify the tool from being accepted, and we will try to be constructive in any feedback regardless of our decision to accept the tool or not.

## Longevity & Maintenance

Tools should be reliable and consistent, and favor local interaction over internet connectivity when possible. Any "external" dependencies (code not run on Light Phones or Light's own servers) should be trustworthy, well-known, and resilient.

## Legal

There may be some tools that are submitted and meet all of our criteria for a tool we'd love to showcase. However, due to third-party terms & conditions, we may need to reject them on the basis of legal gray areas.

### Note from Light

While we tried to outline our guidelines thoroughly, we want to be clear that approval to the community Tool Library is at Light's sole discretion. The guidelines may be updated at any point in the future.

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This is our first time opening up the LightOS to outside contributions, and we are super excited to see this community Tool Library come together. What we've seen so far is inspiring. Thank you for believing in this platform and helping others make going light more possible with new tools. We sincerely appreciate you!