Community-contributed registry entries — should ats-index support it?

[prPMDev]

The idea

The company registry (registry/*.json) is currently populated by manual PRs. Users of ats-index will naturally discover companies on supported ATS platforms as a side-effect of their searches — companies that could be registered but aren't.

What if we made it easy for users to contribute back what they discover?

The design tension

Too low friction	Too high friction
Auto-submit every slug that worked → registry fills with typos, one-off uses, throwaway slugs	PR to the repo → nobody bothers

The right path is probably in the middle: pre-validated submission, one command.

Phased proposal

Phase 1 — CLI command

ats-index contribute --slug whoop --ats lever --name WHOOP --sector wearables

The tool auto-verifies the slug against the ATS API before accepting it. If valid, it opens a pre-filled GitHub issue (or creates it directly if gh is available).

Phase 2 — Passive hint

When fetch <company> succeeds on a slug not in the registry, the CLI prints:

Not yet in registry — share it: ats-index contribute --slug X --ats Y

Phase 3 — MCP-native (once #1 ships)

AI assistants using ats-index via MCP suggest contributions conversationally when they encounter a miss or discover a new valid slug.

Phase 4 — Web form / service (later)

A public submission form that validates via the same API logic and commits to a review branch.

Privacy principle

Only the infrastructure facts travel upstream: slug, name, sector. Never the user's query, target role, or personal context. Keep a firm line between "community contribution to shared infrastructure" and "collection of user behavior data."

Open questions

1. Is Phase 1 (CLI contribute) enough on its own, or does Phase 2 (passive hint) add real value?
2. How should we prevent low-quality submissions? Validation-by-API is the first defense — what else?
3. For Phase 3 (MCP), should the AI ask for user consent per submission, or batch-suggest at end of session?
4. Should submissions include a verifiedAt timestamp so the registry can self-prune stale entries?
5. Anything else worth considering before drafting a concrete design?

This is a direction, not a plan. Curious what others think before committing to a shape.