How to contribute to Open Source - 7 EASY steps 🤗

2025-12-28 · Source: HuggingFace · Field: Technology & Digital — Software Development & Engineering, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning · Depth: Novice, long

Summary

Abubakar, a Hugging Face employee, outlines a seven-step process for contributing to open-source projects, addressing common challenges faced by new contributors. The guide begins with identifying a suitable library, preferably one the user actively uses, and then examining its issue tracker for existing bugs or feature requests, particularly those labeled "good first issue." The process continues with forking the repository to create a personal copy, cloning it locally, and reviewing the project's contributing guidelines to understand its structure and development setup. The core of the contribution involves fixing a bug or implementing a feature, potentially using AI-assisted coding tools, followed by thorough local testing to validate the changes. The final steps include pushing the changes to the forked repository, opening a pull request with a descriptive title and description, disclosing any AI tool usage, and ensuring all continuous integration checks pass. A crucial tip is to enable "allow edits by maintainers" to streamline the review and merging process.

Key takeaway

For Software Engineers or AI Students new to open-source, this guide provides a clear, actionable path to making your first contribution. Focus on projects you use, engage with existing issues, and meticulously follow the fork-fix-test-PR workflow. Remember to enable maintainer edits and disclose AI assistance in your pull requests to foster collaboration and ensure your contributions are smoothly integrated into the project.

Key insights

A structured, seven-step process simplifies contributing to open-source projects, from identifying issues to submitting pull requests.

Principles

• Contribute to libraries you use.
• Always create an issue first.
• Enable maintainer edits on PRs.

Method

1. Find a library. 2. Review issues. 3. Fork the repo. 4. Read guidelines. 5. Fix the bug. 6. Test changes. 7. Push and open a PR.

In practice

• Look for "good first issue" labels.
• Use AI tools for code fixes.
• Disclose AI tool usage in PRs.

Topics

• Open-Source Contribution
• GitHub Workflow
• AI-Assisted Development
• Hugging Face Libraries
• Software Testing

Best for: Software Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, AI Student

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by HuggingFace.