About the Arena

How It Works

Every Friday at 17:00 UTC, a GitHub Action automatically pulls fresh issues from a curated pool of 298+ open-source repositories. Issues are labeled as Good First Issues, Bugs, or Hard Issues.

Every hour, another action checks whether any listed issues have been closed by a pull request. If your PR closes an Arena issue, you automatically earn points.

No registration required. Contributions are detected via GitHub's public metadata.

Rules

  • You have 7 days from when an issue is listed to open a PR
  • Issues with a PR are tracked for up to 28 weeks to allow maintainer review time
  • Issues with no PR after 7 days are dropped from tracking
  • Your PR must reference the issue via a closing keyword (fixes #N, closes #N, resolves #N) or be linked through GitHub's sidebar
  • If multiple PRs reference the same issue, only the one that closes it earns points
  • All contributors to Arena-listed issues are treated as participants

Point System

Good First Issue
1 pt
Bug Fix
2 pts
Hard Issue
4 pts

Player Ranks

Hello World Engineer
Hello World Engineer
0 – 99 points
Bug Slayer
Bug Slayer
100 – 499 points
Mr. Robot
Mr. Robot
500+ points

FAQ

My PR was merged but I didn't get points.

Make sure your PR references the issue — either via a closing keyword (fixes #N, closes #N, resolves #N) in the PR body, or by linking the issue through GitHub's sidebar. If you did link it, open a thread in Discussions.

Can I request a specific repo to be added?

Yes! See config/repos.yml and open a PR or Discussion.

What if I contributed without knowing about the Arena?

You're still counted. All contributors to Arena-listed issues are treated equally.

How is this automated?

Via GitHub Actions + GitHub REST API. See .github/workflows/ for the full scripts.

Tracked Repos

Issues are pulled from 298+ curated repositories spanning ML, AI, data science, geospatial, dev tools, and more.

View the full repo list →

Contributing to the Arena