Dev adventures, epic bugs, tiny wins, and the occasional meltdown. Zola 2026-08-20T00:00:00+00:00 https://golden-fox.dev/tags/coop/atom.xml 2026-08-20T00:00:00+00:00 2026-08-20T00:00:00+00:00 Aakriti Agarwal https://golden-fox.dev/blog/first-open-source-contribution/ <p><em>It was supposed to be a small change. It was a small change. It still took 7 commits.</em></p> <h2 id="why-coop">Why Coop?</h2> <p><a rel="external" href="https://github.com/roostorg/coop">Coop</a> is an open source content moderation tool made by <a rel="external" href="https://roost.tools">ROOST</a>. Basically it’s what trust and safety teams use to look at reported stuff, set up rules and decide what to do about it.</p> <p>I had been wanting to do an open source contribution for ages. The problem was every time I opened a big repo, I would scroll through it for five minutes, feel very stupid and close the tab. This time I told myself I wasn’t allowed to close the tab, Growth.</p> <h2 id="getting-it-to-run-locally">Getting it to run locally</h2> <p>Before I could change anything I had to run it locally. Coop’s full local setup starts a LOT of services such as Postgres, ClickHouse, Redis, Scylla and a few more just for tracing but my laptop is an M1 with <strong>8GB of RAM</strong> (ughh) and it took one look at that list and basically said “you have got to be kidding me”.</p> <p>So I cut it down to only what I needed, which was Postgres, ClickHouse and Redis running in <a href="/til/orbstack/">OrbStack</a> that sat at around 450MB while idle which finally left some room for the actual app. me and my laptop are on speaking terms again.</p> <h2 id="the-issue-i-picked">The issue I picked</h2> <p>I went with <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/roostorg/coop/issues/746">issue #746</a>. There was a settings tab called <strong>“Other”</strong> and it had become the junk drawer of the settings page. Three things were living in it:</p> <ul> <li><strong>User strike TTL</strong>: which already existed somewhere else so it was just sitting there twice for no reason</li> <li><strong>Multiple policies per action</strong>: which actually belonged with the other Review Console settings</li> <li><strong>Partial Items settings</strong>: the only thing that was actually supposed to be there</li> </ul> <p>So the plan was to delete the duplicate, move the policy setting to the Review Console tab and rename “Other” to <strong>Partial Items</strong>. Ohh and update the docs too (Can’t forget the docs).</p> <p>Since it was my first ever contribution, I purposely picked one labelled <strong>good first issue</strong>. The code itself wasn’t the scary part. I just wanted to get used to how the whole thing works (forking, opening a PR, getting reviewed by actual humans) without also having to understand the entire codebase on day one.</p> <h2 id="what-i-actually-changed">What I actually changed</h2> <p>My <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/roostorg/coop/pull/965">PR</a> ended up touching 10 files. The React components for the settings tabs, their tests, the docs and even the screenshots inside the docs. For a rename. Yes really.</p> <p>I also tested the “multiple policies per action” setting properly in the manual review tool because the last thing I wanted was my first ever PR to break something that used to work.</p> <h2 id="the-review-aka-where-i-learned-the-most">The review (aka where I learned the most)</h2> <p>The first reviewer was <a rel="external" href="https://www.coderabbit.ai/">CodeRabbit</a>, an AI review bot which had comments ready before I had even finished feeling proud of myself. Then the actual maintainers showed up and that’s where it got interesting. They asked me to:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Rename the file too.</strong> I had renamed the tab everywhere in the UI but the file was still called <code>OtherTab.tsx</code>. Classic me. It’s now <code>PartialItemsTab.tsx</code>.</li> <li><strong>Delete the leftovers.</strong> Once the switch was gone, some state that only existed for that switch wasn’t needed anymore either. RIP.</li> <li><strong>Fix old links.</strong> I had asked in the PR whether old <code>?tab=other</code> links should redirect somewhere. The answer was yes, so now old links open the new tab instead of just vibing on the default one.</li> </ul> <p>And then there was my favourite review comment of all time:</p> <blockquote> <p>Not an Oxford comma fan, huh? :)</p> </blockquote> <p>No. No I am not. And I never will be.</p> <p>After 7 commits it got approved and merged on <strong>18 August 2026</strong> (YAYYYY!).</p> <h2 id="things-i-learned">Things I learned</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Setting it up is half the work.</strong> Getting a huge project running on a tiny laptop taught me more about Docker than any tutorial ever will.</li> <li><strong>Just ask in the PR.</strong> I overthought things I could have just asked. I spent ages wondering whether old <code>?tab=other</code> links should be handled then eventually just put my questions straight into the PR description. The maintainers answered every single one immediately, so I am really thankful to them :)</li> <li><strong>Maintainers are actually really nice!</strong> I was so nervous about getting judged but everyone was patient and friendly.</li> </ul> <h2 id="what-s-next">What’s next</h2> <p>Since then I have also had a PR merged in <a rel="external" href="https://npmx.dev">npmx</a> and I am working on another one so I think I am an open source person now, right??</p>