docs: condense README to elevator pitch (#478)

[planetf1]

Misc PR

Type of PR

• Bug Fix
• New Feature
• Documentation
• Other

Description

• Link to Issue:
  Fixes README v2 - Condensed elevator pitch (~60 lines vs current 210) #478

Condenses the root README from 206 lines to ~80 lines, replacing detailed installation notes, example walkthroughs, and a verbose contributing section with a focused elevator pitch and links out to the docs site for deeper reading.

Key changes:

• Opening paragraph names the "generative programs" paradigm and frames the problem/solution, aligned with the mellea.ai landing page vision
• Adds explicit badges and links for both mellea.ai (website) and docs.mellea.ai (docs)
• Single accurate @generative + Pydantic code example replacing two examples and the Colab table
• Contributing section links directly to CONTRIBUTING.md, building-extensions docs, and mellea-contribs
• Fixes pre-existing GitHub License badge link (was pointing to badge image URL, not the LICENSE file)
• Adds Apache-2.0 license footer

Testing

• Tests added to the respective file if code was changed
• New code has 100% coverage if code as added
• Ensure existing tests and github automation passes (a maintainer will kick off the github automation when the rest of the PR is populated)

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• title ~= ^(fix|feat|docs|style|refactor|perf|test|build|ci|chore|revert|release)(?:\(.+\))?:

[psschwei]

minor nits, otherwise LGTM

[planetf1]

@psschwei thanks for review - see comments above

[psschwei]

sorry, this one didn't get submitted

[ajbozarth]

Overall looks good, just want to double check that all the removed content is located in other places (CONTRIBUTING or docs) or was just out of date.

[planetf1]

Yes — all removed content was checked. Detailed install instructions, the Colab notebooks, and code examples are all reachable via the Learn More table links. The verbose contributing section is covered by the three bullet links. The old feature list was the only thing not re-homed, but it described internals in a way that no longer matched the current API so it was intentionally dropped.

[planetf1]

@psschwei @ajbozarth all comments addressed and branch rebased onto upstream/main — could you take another look when you get a chance?

[psschwei]

LGTM

I also did a quick compare with what we have on mellea.ai and its largely consistent