docs: make self-hosting and contribution guides clearer

[izadoesdev]

The README now gives founders, self-hosters, and contributors a clear starting point. It replaces stale badges, speculative features, and repeated FAQs with a short product introduction and direct links to each path.

Self-host instructions start from the short self-host environment template and cover direct ClickHouse delivery, disabled hosted billing and Databuddy telemetry, and optional email and AI. Setup and upgrades cover matching releases, secret generation, public URLs, database prompts, and DQL's separate setup. The contributor guide fixes outdated commands and keeps the branch/review workflow. The AI policy keeps disclosure, accepted-issue, human-verification, media, and enforcement requirements while removing personal attacks and public-shaming language.

The three guides are about one-third shorter than the previous versions, including the setup draft's README. Documentation only; no runtime changes.

Validation and dependencies

• Checked commands against package scripts, Turbo tasks, Compose, and the verified self-host flow. Local links, heading anchors, and code fences pass.
• Repository lint, all 33 typecheck tasks, and pre-push tests pass. Independent copy and technical reviews completed.
• Depends on fix(api): honor self-hosted email sender settings #803, fix(ci): simplify self-host setup and database initialization #804, fix(basket): allow self-hosted ingestion without hosted billing #805, fix(dashboard): support custom-domain self-host onboarding #806, fix(env): simplify self-host runtime defaults #814, fix(basket): use direct delivery when self-hosting #815, and fix(rpc): remove hosted billing requirements from self-hosting #816 for the documented self-host behavior. Based directly on staging. This PR owns the README copy previously in fix(ci): simplify self-host setup and database initialization #804, plus CONTRIBUTING.md and AI_POLICY.md.
• No published release includes databuddy-init yet. The README says so; update that notice once a compatible release and all its service images are published.

AI-assisted writing and verification with Codex; draft for maintainer review.

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documentation	Ready	Preview	Sep 16, 2026 8:14pm UTC

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Name	Status	Preview	Inspect	Updated (UTC)
links (preview)	Ready	Visit Preview	Inspect	Sep 16, 2026 8:12pm