I wanted to contribute to open source, but I had no idea where to start. 🔍

When I first wanted to contribute to open source projects, I struggled to find a platform that could help me discover issues relevant to my interests. I knew I wanted to start contributing, but figuring out where to look, which issues to pick, and how to find projects that matched my skills was overwhelming.

Finding GitHub issues isn’t the hard part. There are thousands of them. The real challenge is finding the ones that actually interest you.

That’s why I built Issue Scout. 🚀

The idea is simple: instead of endlessly browsing repositories and scrolling through issues, you can filter opportunities based on what matters to you.

With Issue Scout, you can narrow down issues by:

• 💻 Programming language
• 🏷️ Labels like good first issue, bug, and documentation
• 🎯 Suggested skill level
• 📅 Creation date
• 🔓 Issue status
• 🔎 Keywords and topics you’re interested in

I’m also working on making the search experience more reliable, with automated tests for API behavior, combined filters, pagination, empty results, and GitHub rate limit handling.

This project started with a problem I faced myself, and I hope it can make the first step into open source a little less confusing for someone else.

🚀 Try Issue Scout: https://issue-scout-chi.vercel.app/

💻 Explore the code: https://github.com/sharmao07/issue-scout

There’s still plenty to improve. I’d love to hear what filters, search features, or quality of life improvements would make this more useful for people getting started with open source contributions.

🎬 Video credits: The demo video was edited using Antigravity.