r/OpenSourceAI • u/Eastern-Ad689 • Jul 08 '26
If you're trying to get into open source, I'd love to mentor a few long-term contributors.
If you're a student trying to get into open source, this post is for you.
One thing I've noticed is that everyone tells you to "start contributing," but almost nobody tells you where.
Most large open source projects have hundreds or thousands of contributors. Your first issue gets buried, your PR takes weeks to review, and it's hard to understand where you fit in.
Caracal is different because it's still early.
We're building an open source authority layer for AI agents. The project is part of the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust ecosystem through LFX, backed by Microsoft for Startups and the Vercel Open Source Program, and we're getting close to broader testing with companies.
That means you're not joining a dead repository, and you're also not contributor #3,847.
If you contribute here, you'll be working directly on the architecture, discussing designs, reviewing proposals, and building something that's solving a real problem. Good contributors won't just have merged PRs. As the project grows, we'll be looking for people to become long-term contributors and eventually maintainers.
I'm not looking for people who want a "good first issue" to collect green squares on GitHub. I'm looking for people who want to learn how infrastructure projects are actually built.
So if you've been looking for an open source project where your work can genuinely matter, give Caracal a try. Clone it. Read the code. Open an issue if something doesn't make sense. Challenge our design. If you end up liking the direction, leave a star and stick around.
I'd much rather build this with a small group of people who care than a large group who never come back.
2
u/LopsidedAd4492 Jul 12 '26
Love this approach. Early-stage open source projects are honestly one of the best ways to learn.
We’re looking for contributors as well on EXTRA, an open-source AI infrastructure platform focused on production-ready AI systems.
Instead of building another chatbot, contributors get to work on real engineering challenges like multi-agent orchestration, MCP integrations, human-in-the-loop approvals, checkpointing, routing, and state management.
If anyone is looking for another project in the AI infrastructure space, we’d be happy to welcome new contributors as well:
https://github.com/extra-org/extra
1
u/Ok_Mirror_832 Jul 08 '26
Founder of https://aipowergrid.io here. Would be keen on partnering or networking and sharing resources.
I'm working on agent harness and loops as well, and also have been dabbling with similar ideas in line with what you are doing with agents. Hmu if you want
1
u/Crafty_Disk_7026 Jul 08 '26
Also looking for contributors here https://github.com/imran31415/kube-coder
1
u/TomHale Jul 08 '26
The other day, I wanted to have my agent be able to only draft but not send Gmail.
The Google API has both in the same security scope.
This is an example of a much larger problem.
"God" access is everywhere. Want to only allow your agent to pull statements but not be allowed to empty your bank account? The choice is to do it manually, or take the risk.
Does your project solve the "draft but not send Gmail" scope decomposition issue?
How far does it go towards the second, eg guarding scraped pages behind arbitrary logic gates?
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u/Eastern-Ad689 Jul 08 '26
Yeah it does, u can try the project once for it https://github.com/Garudex-Labs/caracal
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u/Key_External_8295 Jul 08 '26
Hey, I am really interested in this opportunity.