How to contribute

Welcome to the Open Alliance Groups (GOUP) project. Contributions are accepted via GitHub pull requests. This page covers how to pick up work, open a PR, and meet the definition of done.

Finding work

Browse open issues at https://github.com/goup/open-alliance-groups/issues.
Start a discussion before investing significant effort on a new feature — use https://github.com/goup/open-alliance-groups/discussions.
If you want to add a third-party service integration, read docs/guides/integrations.md first.

Setting up your environment

Before writing any code, follow the steps in Development workflow to bring up a local database, apply migrations, and confirm the test suites pass.

Branch and commit conventions

Create a feature or fix branch from main, e.g. feat/my-feature or fix/issue-123.
Every commit must carry a DCO sign-off (see CONTRIBUTING.md):
```
git commit -s -m "feat: describe the change"
```
The Author and Signed-off-by e-mail addresses must match.

Opening a pull request

Push your branch and open a PR against main.
Fill in the PR description: what changed, why, and how to test it.
If you are unsure whether a change will be accepted, open an issue first to get feedback.
The CI pipeline (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs automatically on every PR. All checks must be green before merge.
For visual changes, update Playwright snapshots with just e2e-update-snapshots and commit the diff.

Review expectations

At least one maintainer approval is required.
Address every review comment before requesting a re-review. If you disagree with a comment, explain why in the thread.
Avoid force-pushing after a review has started; add fixup commits instead so the diff is easy to follow.

Definition of done

A PR is ready to merge when:

All CI checks pass (lint, format, unit tests, database tests, contract tests).
The reviewer has approved the PR.
Every commit is signed off.
New behaviour is covered by tests (Rust unit/integration, pgTAP, or Playwright as appropriate).
Documentation is updated if the change affects public-facing behaviour or configuration.