Archestra is an open-source project maintained by a full-time core team who are passionate about building high-quality AI infrastructure. Contributions from the community are genuinely valued and welcomed — this page explains how to do it effectively and responsibly.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/archestra-ai/archestra/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Talk to the Team First
Before writing a single line of code, reach out. This is the single most important step in a successful contribution.Join Slack
Post in the #general channel. The core team will jump in, share context, and help you avoid duplicating work already in progress.
Complete Contributor Onboarding
Takes about 60 seconds. Required before you can comment, open issues, or open pull requests on the repository.
- The team may already have designs or implementation plans related to your idea.
- Early-stage feedback is far more effective than reviewing code that was built in a different direction.
Hey, my name is [your name], and I would love to work on [your idea]!
Contribute Responsibly
The Archestra team encourages the use of AI tools during development. At the same time, the project benefits only from contributions made at a certain level of craft and care. Pull requests that show signs of unreviewed AI-generated code may be closed. Common signs include:Signs of Unreviewed AI Generation
Signs of Unreviewed AI Generation
- Massive AI-generated comments and description blocks that add noise without insight
- Code that does not follow the existing patterns and conventions of the codebase
- Code that violates reasonable clean code best practices
- Code that was not tested before being submitted
- Other noticeable signs of rushed or unreviewed generation
Bounties
Archestra uses bounties as an optional way to recognise contributors for meaningful work. They are not contract jobs and do not replace coordination with maintainers. Irresponsible use of AI bots to spam issues and disrupt working contributors has made this policy necessary. The team has written more about this in Let’s talk about AI slop. Use AI responsibly, communicate clearly, and help keep the project a high-effort engineering space.Submitting a Pull Request
Discuss Your Idea First
Post in the Archestra Slack community and confirm with the team that your contribution is welcome and not already in progress.
Complete Contributor Onboarding
Sign in via GitHub at archestra.ai/contributor-onboard. A CI job adds your username to the
EXTERNAL_CONTRIBUTORS.md file, granting you access to participate in the repository.Set Up Your Development Environment
Follow the Developer Quickstart to get the platform running locally with Tilt and a local Kubernetes cluster.
Write and Test Your Changes
Follow the existing code style enforced by the Biome formatter and linter. Test your changes thoroughly before opening a PR. Do not submit code that has not been run locally.
Open a Pull Request
Push your branch and open a pull request against
main. Provide a clear description of what the change does and why. Reference any related issue numbers.Code Style
- Formatter and linter: Biome — install the VSCode extension to get real-time feedback.
- Follow the existing patterns and conventions in the part of the codebase you are modifying.
- Avoid large blocks of auto-generated comments; write comments that explain why, not what.
Access for External Contributors
To prevent AI spam on issues and pull requests, the repository has GitHub’s “Limit to prior contributors” setting enabled. This blocks anyone who has not committed tomain from commenting or opening issues.
Completing the contributor onboarding flow adds your GitHub username to EXTERNAL_CONTRIBUTORS.md, making you a “prior contributor” and granting you full participation access — no manual maintainer action required.