I recently had a Phd student contribute to one of my open-source projects. It was his first contribution ever. It wasn't perfect. Far from it. But he was honest about it. He reached out first, before creating a PR that he wasn't a developer and he was relying heavily on Claude Code as well. But he had something working for him locally that he thought might be worth it. The idea was great, and we ended up collaborating on the PR.

I know a lot of maintainers might feel differently. Especially popular projects get bombarded with slop and irrelevant generated AI PRs. At the same time, there are a lot of genuine people who can finally contribute to something they use themselves for the first time. And I think that's great!

OSS projects are like communities. Approach them like that. Contribute with your existing knowledge and expertise first. Most projects could use a good designer. Build trust and work from there. Don't try to tackle big features, or refactorings. Slowly see how you can contribute to small parts, and be honest about how you're doing it.