Start contributing

Offing's work is split into small issues, each sized for one pull request. You do not need to know the codebase first: every issue in the lane: free-agent lane carries a brief with the files to touch, the steps, and the command that proves it is done.

Pick an issue

• Open good first issue issues — isolated changes with fixtures. Start here.
• Open type: rule good first issues — add one reviewed lifecycle rule from a sourced importer candidate, with fixtures.
• Open fixture edge-case issues — lock a triaged false-positive boundary into tests/fixtures/ (see the fixtures README).
• All open issues — filter by label, area, or size.
• Project board — the current phase and what is in progress.
• Roadmap — phases, epics, and what each one delivers.

Choose an issue whose Depends on issues are closed, then comment on it to claim it. Epics (type: epic) only track tasks; the work happens in their task issues.

Lanes

A lane: label says who an issue suits. It is a promise about the brief, not a restriction.

Lane	Who it suits	What to expect
lane: free-agent	New contributors and any coding agent	A complete brief: files, steps, commands, and a done-check
lane: strong-agent	Experienced contributors or strong coding agents	Architecture, contracts, parsers, and new detectors
lane: maintainer	Maintainer only	Accounts, releases, submissions, and outreach

Sizes are size: XS (under an hour), size: S (a few hours), and size: M (about a day).

Rules of the road

• One issue per pull request. If you find more work, open a follow-up issue.
• Add or update a test when behavior changes, and keep JSON output deterministic.
• Lifecycle claims need an authoritative, versioned source. Read the evidence policy.
• Scans never use the network and never run repository code.
• Run npm run check before you ask for review.

First steps

The five-minute path in CONTRIBUTING.md walks through cloning, checking the baseline, branching, and opening a pull request. For a first substantive change, add a lifecycle rule; rules are the most valuable contribution and the most self-contained.

Ask

Questions and ideas belong in GitHub Discussions: Q&A to ask, Ideas to propose, and Show and tell to share what you built. Use issues for bugs, lifecycle rule proposals, and ecosystem requests.