Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., status check, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Ways to contribute

Contributions come in many forms such as writing code or adding examples.

It can be just as useful to use the package and file issues for bugs or potential improvements as well as missing or inadequate documentation. Most open source developers start out with small contributions like this as it is a great way to learn about the project and the associated processes. We often recommend opening an issue before submitting a pull request. Opening the issue can help in clarifying the approach to addressing the problem. In some cases, this saves the author from spending time on a pull request that cannot be accepted.

For new features, it’s important to understand our basic architecture. This can help you get on the right track to contributing.

Importantly, all pull requests are expected to pass the various test/build pipelines. A pull request can only be merged by a maintainer (an AI Red Team member) who will check that tests were added (or updated) and relevant documentation was updated as necessary. We do not provide any guarantees on response times, although team members will do their best to respond within a business day.

In some cases, pull requests don’t move forward. This might happen because the author is no longer available to contribute, and/or because the proposed change is no longer relevant. If the change is still relevant maintainers will check in with the author on the pull request. If there is no response within 14 days (two weeks) maintainers may assign someone else to continue the work (assuming the CLA has been accepted). In rare cases, maintainers might not be able to wait with reassigning the work. For example, if a particular change is on the critical path for other planned changes. Ideally, such changes are handled by an AI Red Team member so that this problem doesn’t occur in the first place.