79 people made their first PR to my repo in October. Here's what made it work

Description and use

Instant claiming, clear issue instructions, and rapid PR reviews enabled 79 first‑time contributors to submit 108 PRs in October, expanding the project to 16 languages.

Problem

Attracting and managing first‑time contributors to a public repository

Outcome

The combination of instant claiming, clear issue writing, rapid reviews, and a continuous supply of starter issues led to a record number of first‑time PRs and multilingual contributions

Workflow

• Build Open Source Radar with beginner issues and a first‑contribution guide
• Add a /claim workflow that assigns an issue immediately and releases it after 7 days of inactivity
• Write issues with explicit change instructions, file locations, and test commands
• Review each PR within a day, merge when almost correct, and fix remaining minor issues in a follow‑up
• Publish daily job to open new untranslated guide chapters when free issues fall below six
• Provide a CONTRIBUTING table listing always‑available starter issues by skill level
• Credit contributors in README to encourage sharing

Evidence

At first people asked "can I work on this?" and then had to wait for me to answer.

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So I added a tiny workflow: comment /claim and you're assigned on the spot, max two issues per person.

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Every issue says what to change, which file, and how to test it.

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I try to review every PR within a day. When something's almost right, I merge it and push the small fix myself in a follow-up.

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Traffic dipped on the days I had only one or two free good first issues left.

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