Most people overthink their first open-source contribution. They browse popular repos, look at the codebase, feel overwhelmed, and close the tab.
There’s a simpler way in.
Many open-source projects use a “good first issue” label to flag tasks that don’t require deep context of the project. These are intentionally scoped to be small - fix a typo in docs, add a missing test, handle an edge case. They’re detached from complex dependencies, so you can focus on the change itself rather than understanding the entire architecture first.
Where to find them:
- goodfirstissues.com - aggregates good first issues across popular projects, filterable by language
- GitHub Search - query directly:
label:"good first issue" state:open language:JavaScript updated:>2024-01-01(swap the language and date to your needs)
A few practical tips:
- Before you start coding, comment on the issue saying you’d like to work on it. This avoids duplicate effort.
- Read the project’s
CONTRIBUTING.mdif it exists - some projects have specific conventions for branches, commits, or tests. - Don’t aim for perfect. A small, working PR that follows the project’s style is better than an ambitious one that sits unfinished.
The hardest part is the first one. After that, it stops feeling like “contributing to open source” and starts feeling like just… fixing things.