Docs › Under the hood1.0.0

Your first contribution

About 30 minutes, from clone to pull request. The example fixes one sentence of the interface; every other change follows the same loop.

1. Set up (10 minutes)#

You need Go 1.26 or newer, Node 22 or newer and GNU make. Docker is optional.

git clone https://github.com/<you>/OpenTodo.git   # your fork
cd OpenTodo
make dev

make dev starts the API on :8080 and the web app with hot reload on http://localhost:5173. Open it and create the owner account: the data lives in ./data, which you can delete to start over.

2. Pick an issue (5 minutes)#

Issues labelled good first issue are small and need no design. Comment on the one you take, so nobody else does.

Copy fixes, a missing translation, a docs correction or a bug with clear steps need no OpenSpec change. A change of behaviour does: see The OpenSpec workflow.

3. Make the change (10 minutes)#

Say a button reads "Snooze 10 min" and should read "Snooze for 10 minutes". The English text is the message id:

1. Find it: git grep -n "'Snooze 10 min'" web/src.
2. Change the English in the t('…') call.
3. Refresh the message list: node scripts/i18n/extract.mjs --write (from the repository root).
4. Rename the key in every catalog under web/src/locales/ (de.json, fr.json, …). Keep a translation that still fits; otherwise delete the entry and say so in the pull request, so a speaker of that language fills it in. Never paste a machine translation.
5. Check it in the running app, then run make i18n-check.

A Go change follows the same loop with go test ./internal/<package>/, a docs change with make docs-check.

4. Check and open the pull request (5 minutes)#

make check          # what CI runs; run at least the part you touched
git switch -c fix/snooze-label
git commit -am "Say how long Snooze lasts"
git push -u origin fix/snooze-label

Open the pull request against main, fill in the template and link the issue (Fixes #123). A screen you changed gets a before and after screenshot (make screens, see Tests and checks). The rules for pull requests are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Next#

• Architecture tour: one task edit, from the click to the other device.
• Tests and checks: what make check runs and how to run one test.

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