Contributor Guidelines

Open-source contributions to our projects are encouraged, and are an excellent way to build technical skills while improving tools used by real students. By respecting the following guidelines, you can help ensure your own contribution is meaningful.

GitHub Courtesy

Our internal teams are often hard at work on quarterly initiatives, and some of our GitHub issues may be part of these timelines. To prevent collisions with other developers, please:

• Before starting work on an open GitHub issue, let us know by leaving a comment expressing your interest. A member of our team will respond and can officially assign you to the issue
  • If you are new to the codebase, we recommend trying issues labeled "good first task".
• Do not work on an issue that has already been assigned to someone else.
• GitHub issues are meant to be actionable, so be precise when authoring one. If you are proposing a larger or more complex idea that requires discussion, we instead recommend reaching out on Discord or filling out the corresponding project's feedback form.

Our team members have the final say on whether a task is reserved for internal development, but we will try to be accommodating.

AI Policy

ICSSC Projects, per ICSSC's constitution, aims to offer opportunities for students to build their skills and become strong technical experts, including learning to wield AI tools productively. To advance this mission, the following policy applies to open-source contributions on all of our projects:

• AI assistance in development and debugging is encouraged.
• Contributions must be human-initiated. This means that automated issues or PRs, especially those generated by agents scraping GitHub, are not allowed.
• Issue descriptions, PR descriptions, and comments must start with and mostly consist of human writing.
  • AI can support your writing, but do not simply paste AI output.
  • AI-generated writing must be disclosed as such.
• Many of our repositories use AI code reviewers, but a human will review each line of code before a PR is merged. Before putting up a PR, the author must also review their own code, including any AI-generated code.

Contributions that violate this policy may be rejected.