Finding Good First Issues

Difficulty: Beginner

Question

How do you find good first issues and choose which open-source projects to contribute to?

Answer

Finding the right project and issue is the most important first step in open-source contribution. Starting with a project you actually use gives you intrinsic motivation and domain knowledge.

I start by listing projects I use daily — tools, libraries, and frameworks I'm already familiar with. For these projects, I check their GitHub issues filtered by labels like 'good first issue', 'help wanted', 'beginner friendly', or 'up-for-grabs'.

For discovering new projects, I use platforms like Good First Issue (goodfirstissue.dev), Up For Grabs, or GitHub's Explore page. I also use InternHack's open source discovery page, which filters repos by domain and difficulty level.

When evaluating a project, I check several signals: recent commit activity (is it actively maintained?), responsiveness of maintainers (how quickly do issues get responses?), quality of contributing documentation (is there CONTRIBUTING.md?), and community friendliness (read through recent PR discussions).

I also look at the issue's scope. A good first issue should be well-described, have clear acceptance criteria, and not require deep project-specific knowledge. I avoid issues that have been open for months without activity.

Key points

• Start with projects you already use and love
• Check for active maintenance — recent commits and responsive maintainers
• Look for well-described issues with clear acceptance criteria
• Use label filters: good-first-issue, help-wanted, beginner-friendly

Concepts covered

Issue Discovery, Labels, Project Selection, Filtering