How to contribute

A practical, repository-oriented index of how to work in this codebase. The canonical contributor handbook lives in CONTRIBUTING.md and the contribute/ directory; this section summarizes and links the parts a code reader most often needs.

Picking up work

• Browse open issues and filter by team / squad labels (e.g. area/dashboard, area/alerting). Most squads keep their own backlog labels.
• Beginner-friendly issues are tagged beginner friendly.
• The CLA must be signed before a PR can land — the CLA assistant prompts you on first PR.

PR mechanics

• Branch naming is per-author preference; branches are merged via squash on main.
• Frontend and backend changes ship as separate PRs when possible. They are released on different cadences and the CI pipelines differ.
• Every code change should have tests when feasible — see Testing.
• Public APIs (HTTP/REST or @grafana/* package exports) change via a documented review by the relevant squad.
• Conventional commit prefixes are not enforced but most commit titles use a domain prefix: Dashboards: Fix …, Alerting: Add …, Docs: …. Look at git log --oneline for the local style.

Definition of done

A change is ready to merge when:

1. CI is green (frontend tests + backend tests + e2e + lint).
2. CODEOWNERS-required reviewers (.github/CODEOWNERS) have approved.
3. New tests have been added for new behavior (see the patterns referenced in Testing).
4. User-facing changes include a changelog entry — usually generated automatically from the PR title and labels.
5. For schema or feature-flag changes, the relevant make gen-* outputs are committed.

Where things live

If you want to …	Look here
Add an HTTP route	pkg/api/ (handler) + pkg/api/api.go (registration)
Add a backend service	New folder in pkg/services/<name>/, wire up in pkg/server/wire.go
Add a feature flag	pkg/services/featuremgmt/registry.go + make gen-feature-toggles
Add a frontend feature	New folder under public/app/features/<name>/
Add or modify a panel plugin	public/app/plugins/panel/<name>/
Add or modify a datasource plugin	public/app/plugins/datasource/<name>/ (frontend) and pkg/tsdb/<name>/ (backend)
Add a CUE-defined kind	kinds/<name>/ + make gen-cue
Add a new app-platform resource	apps/<name>/ + make gen-apps

Sub-pages

• Development workflow
• Testing
• Debugging
• Patterns and conventions
• Tooling