There is no C in this project. There is Python, some YAML, a sprawl of shell, and a Makefile, and the Makefile is the best documentation in the repository. Not because it compiles anything, it compiles nothing, but because it is the one file everyone already knows to open, and it answers the only question a newcomer actually has: how do I run this thing?
.PHONY: install test lint serve
install:
pip install -r requirements.txt
test:
pytest -q
lint:
ruff check .
serve:
python -m app --reload
That is the whole trick. The commands were always there, scattered across a README that drifted out of date, a half-remembered shell history, and one person's head. The Makefile just gathers them in the obvious place and gives them short names. make test, make serve, done. Nobody has to know the exact pytest incantation, because the incantation lives in the one file you check first.
I have watched people reach for fancier task runners, and some are genuinely nicer. But make is already on the machine, everybody half-knows it, and a target is just a name with some shell underneath. For a project that builds nothing, that is exactly enough. The point was never compilation. The point is having one front door.