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World 12: Career Quest

Your first open-source PR

You will learn: the steps to suggest a fix to someone else's project.

The problem

You love a free notes app. Its README has a typo. You are not on their team. Can you still fix it?

Tap the line with the typo.

0 of 1 found

Try it

Open source code is public. Anyone can suggest a change. The project’s keepers, called maintainers, decide what goes in. Who does what?

Drag a card into a box. Or tap the card, then tap the box.

      Watch

      Tap every issue made for first-timers.

      0 of 2 found

      Maintainers mark easy tasks with a label: good first issue: A label for an easy issue that a newcomer can pick up.. Start there. Big rewrites can wait.

      Try it

      Projects keep their house rules in CONTRIBUTING.md: The house rules for helpers: how to report, change and send work.. Read this one. Then follow rule 1 on issue #42.

      Practice repo — not a real website
      notes-crew / quicknotes
      A tiny app for fast notes.
      CONTRIBUTING.md · 8 lines

      Contributing to QuickNotes

      Thanks for helping!

      1. Ask in the issue before you start.
      2. One small change per pull request.
      3. Write clear commit messages, like docs: fix typo.
      4. Be kind. We are all volunteers.

      Try it

      Put the whole journey in order. You met forks in World 4 and pull requests in World 5.

      First step at the top. Put these in order. Use the arrows, or drag.

      • Reply kindly to the review
      • Push the branch to your fork
      • Open a pull request
      • Fork the project to your account
      • Clone your fork
      • Make a new branch
      • Make one small change and commit it

      Try it

      Your fix is committed on a branch called fix-readme-typo. Build the command that sends it to your fork.

      Tap the pieces in the right order.

      …

      Check

      A maintainer replies: “Thanks! Can you fix the same typo in docs/setup.md too?” What do you do?

      Watch

      Tap each point on the timeline.

      One PR is a great start. Tap your path from here.

      You did it!

      You can now suggest a fix to any open-source project.

      Go deeper (optional)

      Many repos have a contribute page that lists their good first issues. Try github.com/OWNER/REPO/contribute. Your PR may sit for days. Maintainers are often volunteers, so be patient. Some projects ask you to sign a contributor agreement first. CONTRIBUTING.md will say so.