Open Source Friday - Your first contribution to OSS

Andrea Griffiths sits down with Angela Wen (an engineer on GitHub’s Copilot platform) to walk through what a first open-source contribution looks like end-to-end.

Overview

The video covers a beginner-friendly workflow for contributing to an existing open-source repository on GitHub:

Finding a starter issue

• How to discover a repository to contribute to
• Looking for issues labeled good first issue
• Setting expectations when approaching a mature repo with lots of stars and history

Understanding the project before coding

• Reading the README
• Reading CONTRIBUTING.md to understand:
  • Contribution guidelines
  • Local setup expectations
  • Coding standards and review expectations

Working with forks and keeping them up to date

• Forking a repository
• Syncing a fork with the upstream repository so work starts from a current baseline

Opening a pull request the maintainers can work with

• Creating a draft pull request to share work early
• Navigating CI checks and understanding that “green checks” are part of the contribution process
• Communicating clearly and keeping expectations realistic when working with maintainers

Using Copilot responsibly

• Treating Copilot output as a starting point, not an authority
• Reviewing changes yourself before asking for human review (“If you want another human to review your work, you need to read it first”)

Step-by-step beginner walkthrough

• The episode ends with a practical, step-by-step walkthrough aimed at first-time contributors, from repository discovery through submitting a pull request.