I’m an avid OSS maintainer and contributor (proof <a href="https://github/buger" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://github/buger</a>)
I wanted to make some OSS contributions recently, as part of 24pullrequest advent challenge, and checked out a few big projects. Here’s what I actually discovered…
They don’t need it… Large projects like Node, Shadcn, and Rust are already overwhelmed with contributions and can’t handle their pull request queues.
Plus contributing to these large projects is incredibly time-consuming. Sometimes it takes hours just to figure out how to build the project. And let’s be honest - most of us just have a few hours we want to spend on something meaningful.
What actually worked for me was finding projects that are actively looking for contributors and have a fast feedback cycle. It’s such a joy to pair with someone who is in need and can actually benefit from your help. Plus, there are so many overlooked projects that provide something meaningful to the world.
I tried platforms like <a href="https://24pullrequests.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://24pullrequests.com</a> to find these gems, but they either suggested long-inactive projects or the same popular ones like NodeJS – hitting that same wall again.
So I built <a href="https://helpwanted.dev" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://helpwanted.dev</a> - a place where active maintainers can meet with future contributors. Nothing fancy, just fresh requests for help from active maintainers.
While building this, I found some cool projects I never knew existed:
• Animal Shelter Manager
• Salam Language: First coding language for Persian/Arabic speakers
• Korean Train Set for OpenTTD
My latest experience - I have submitted 3 PRs, and got the response on each within a few hours. How cool is that??
I showed it to a African oss community WhatsApp chat, and got feedback that a guy knowing just css and html got 3 prs merged in 2 days!
The site has some AI magic to give you quick summaries about projects, issues details, and complexity scores. Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
In the spirit of Christmas, wanted to share my love for the OSS community. No 1000 PRs in queue, just pure joy of contributing, and helping someone who actually needs help.
<a href="https://helpwanted.dev" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://helpwanted.dev</a>
OSS 💕

The official Open Source daily.dev Squad. 

Open Source

Large open-source projects like Node and Rust are often overwhelmed with contributions, making it hard for new contributors to make meaningful impacts. The author created helpwanted.dev, a platform where active maintainers can meet future contributors, focusing on smaller, actively maintained projects that really need help. This approach offers a quicker and more gratifying feedback loop for contributors. The platform also uses AI to provide summaries and complexity scores of projects and issues.

How to find actively maintained OSS projects that actually need help

This is cool! Bookmarked for future use!

I could not find where to add my project in helpwanted but it’s a good idea, thanks for sharing
here is my project <a href="https://github.com/ozkanpakdil/swaggerific" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://github.com/ozkanpakdil/swaggerific</a> it’s written in javafx and build with graalvm, feel free to open a PR, I will review them.