Contributor guidance for any project - matches developer skills to test gaps, stale docs, bugspots, and open issues.
Part of the agentsys ecosystem.
Point a contributor at a project and get specific, data-backed suggestions for where they can help. Collects project health signals automatically, asks about the developer's background, then matches skills to needs with concrete next steps.
- Use this when onboarding a new contributor and need to match work to their skills
- Use this when looking for good-first-issue candidates backed by actual project data
- Use this when a project needs help but maintainers don't know where to direct people
- Use this when you want to contribute to an open-source project but don't know where to start
agentsys install can-i-help
/can-i-help
Three phases run in sequence:
- Collect (automatic, no LLM) - gathers project metadata + contributor-specific signals
- Match (Opus agent) - asks about developer background, matches skills to project needs
- Guide (interactive) - for each recommendation, reads relevant code and explains what to do
Beyond base project data (manifest, structure, git), the collector gathers signals specific to contribution opportunities:
| Signal | Source | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|
| Good-first areas | repo-intel can-i-help |
Areas with clear patterns, low coupling, easy entry |
| Test gaps | repo-intel test-gaps |
Hot source files without co-changing test files |
| Doc drift | repo-intel doc-drift |
Documentation with low code coupling (likely stale) |
| Bugspots | repo-intel bugspots |
Files with high bug-fix density |
| Open issues | gh issue list |
GitHub issues with labels and assignees |
The Opus agent tailors recommendations based on developer profile:
| Developer says... | Recommended areas |
|---|---|
| "New to the stack" | Good-first areas with clear patterns and examples |
| "Experienced developer" | Hard problems in pain-point areas, architectural improvements |
| "I want to write tests" | Test gaps in frequently-changed files |
| "I want to fix bugs" | Bugspot files + relevant open issues |
| "I want to improve docs" | Stale documentation with concrete code examples |
Each recommendation includes:
- What - specific file, area, or issue
- Why - data-backed reason (bug rate, test gap, staleness)
- How - reads relevant code and explains what needs doing
- First step - exact action to take
/can-i-help # Current repo, normal depth
/can-i-help /path/to/repo # Specific repo
/can-i-help --depth=deep # Include repo-map AST data
The collector passes on 100 open-source repositories across 8 languages (JS/TS, Rust, Go, Python, C/C++, Java, Deno). Contributor signal queries validated on 8 repos with manual cross-checking against actual code: phantom directories filtered, source code prioritized over test/doc dirs, generated data excluded from recommendations.
- Git repository with history
- agent-analyzer for contributor signals (optional - prompts to generate if missing)
- GitHub CLI (
gh) for open issues (optional)
- onboard - codebase orientation (what the project is and how it works)
- git-map - git history analysis (data source for all contributor signals)
MIT