Update the contributing page to indicate that a bug report comes before the pull request #111

❌ This issue is not open for contribution. Visit Contributing guidelines to learn about the contributing process and how to find suitable issues.

Overview

Contributors are pointing coding agents at Kolibri to hunt bugs. The reports are mostly genuine,
though sometimes misdiagnosed. The order we want is an issue first, then a request to work on it.

One contributor opened the pull request first and the issue afterwards. The guidelines do not state
the order, so there was nothing to point them at.

Complexity: Low
Target branch: main

Context

The guidelines live at
Contributing to our open code base.
.github/CONTRIBUTING.md in this repo is a five line pointer to that page, and every bot message
links there. So the work is content on the website, tracked here because the contributor process
lives here.

The automations went part of the way on their own. #103 posts a message when a pull request links no
issue, and in the case that prompted this the author read it and opened the issue to link. #103 only
closes a pull request when its linked issue is assigned to someone else, which is deliberate, so
that someone doing useful work is not shut down.

Closing a pull request that arrives before its issue was considered and rejected as too harsh.

Seen in learningequality/kolibri#15539.

The Change

State on the contributing page:

• If you find something that should be a bug fix, open an issue first. Do not open the pull request
  first.
• Opening an issue and asking to work on it is fine, as long as the issue is valid, is not a
  duplicate, and you are within our limits on assigned issues and open pull requests.
• Check the diagnosis before you file. A bug found by an agent is often real but described wrongly.
• A suggestion is not a bug report. Suggestions and unplanned work go to Discussions.

Out of Scope

• Auto-closing a pull request that links no issue. Considered and rejected as too harsh.
• Setting up Discussions, which is [Proposal] Set up GitHub Discussions as the entry point for unplanned work #105.
• The bot message that asks for the link, which is its own issue.

Acceptance Criteria

• The page states the issue first order for bug fixes.
• The page states the conditions for asking to work on your own issue.
• The page asks contributors to check a diagnosis before filing.
• The page separates a bug report from a suggestion, and sends suggestions to Discussions.

References

• [Proposal] Set up GitHub Discussions as the entry point for unplanned work #105 sets up Discussions as the entry point for unplanned work. This issue covers the other door,
  for a genuine bug, and the two pages must agree on which to use.
• Act on the issue a community pull request closes #103 added the message that asks for a linked issue.
• Mastery log diff returns 500 when a try has null time_spent kolibri#15539 is the case that prompted this.

AI usage

I used Claude Code to check where the guidelines live and what the automations already do. I decided
the content and the split from #105.