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Open to every SST student

You do not need to be good yet. You need a laptop and a GitHub account.

Most people arrive having never opened a pull request. So did everyone in the hall of fame began there.

Free

No fee, ever

All years

No prior experience

Where people actually start

There are two ways in. Neither of them is a commitment.

No track to pick. Choose a day and show up with nothing ready — the setup is the part that defeats people, so we do it with you.

Build days

One evening. One senior sitting next to you. A branch by the end of it.

Bring: A laptop and a GitHub account. That's it.

Start on this path →

Who it's for

Never contributed? Barely touched Git? Not sure you belong? This one's for you — it's how most of us started.

What week one looks like

  1. Just turn up. Nothing to install — we do the setup with you.
  2. You're paired with someone who's already landed work upstream, sitting right next to you.
  3. Together you pick one real issue and read the code around it. Reading is most of the work.
  4. You leave with a branch and a change. Merged tonight or not, doesn't matter.

What you walk away with

A real project running on your laptop, a branch with a real change, and someone to message when you're stuck.

Pairs are planned ahead, so sign-ups close before the day.

Hackathons

Thirty people stuck on the same problems in the same room. Nothing is ranked.

Bring: A laptop, a GitHub account, and the whole day.

Start on this path →

Who it's for

A bigger build day. For anyone who's bounced off open source alone at midnight, or found judged hackathons exhausting.

What week one looks like

  1. Come for the whole day, nothing prepared. The first hour is thirty people beating the same install errors together.
  2. Pick from our shortlist of real repos with real maintainers.
  3. Seniors float around. Asking out loud is expected.
  4. Everyone shows what they got to — stack traces count too.

What you walk away with

A day of open source in good company, a PR open or nearly there, and a room that knows your name.

No judges, no rankings. Just thirty people getting unstuck together.

Already have merged PRs? Say so after you sign in and skip straight to a project team.

The honest bit: who this isn't for, plus FAQs ↓

Why bother

The thing worth joining for is decided months before you apply. Which is the whole reason to start in September.

A build day is a good evening. This is what it's an evening towards: GSoC, LFX and Outreachy — paid, competitive, and won by people maintainers already know. Our track is run by people who got in.

Program track

The GSoC/LFX prep cohort, with mentors who have been through it.

Sign in and say this is your aim →

Who it's for

Aiming at GSoC, LFX or Outreachy, and not keen on writing the proposal the week it's due? Join six months early — for GSoC, that's autumn.

What week one looks like

  1. Pick two target orgs. Two, because nobody reliably gets their first choice.
  2. Read both contribution guides and build both codebases locally.
  3. Find a small issue in each. Goal: a merged patch in both, so maintainers know your username by March.
  4. Join the weekly cohort, where people read your proposal and tell it to you straight.

What you walk away with

Months of commits in two orgs before applications open, a proposal that's already been torn apart, and the mentors below — who were where you are a year ago.

The people you get

6 mentors, and every one of them got in.

6 organisations, no two the same

Your proposal gets torn apart by someone who wrote a winning one last March. And when the build breaks in week three, help is two floors away.

  • Shubham Kumar
    Shubham Kumar

    GSoC 2026Mifos Initiative

    230+ merged pull requests into Mifos — the record a maintainer reads first.

  • Piyush Goenka
    Piyush Goenka

    GSoC 2026Ruby

    Shipping HTTP chunked transfer and streaming across Iodine and the Rage framework. Contributor to maintainer at Palisadoes in three months, and first of a thousand teams at Smart India Hackathon 2025.

  • Kumar Amityush

    GSoC 2026OpenAstronomyMentorship Lead

    In GSoC as a second-year, on OpenAstronomy's data-analysis and visualisation tooling. The six-month runway is a default, not a rule.

  • Prateek Singh
    Prateek Singh

    GSoC 2026OWASPPresident

    Builds The Librarian, OpenCRE's link-decision engine — anything under 0.80 confidence goes to a human. 90+ merged commits, second-highest in the repo.

  • Vansh Dobhal
    Vansh Dobhal

    GSoC 2026STE||AR Group (HPX)

  • Raj Prakash

    GSoC 2026OpenMRS

    Built the audit-log dashboard clinicians and hospitals read in OpenMRS.

Every selection the club has, in one list →

Be honest with yourself

This is not for everyone. Four reasons to walk away now.

Still here? Then it's for you.

Questions

The things people actually ask.

If you close this tab

You'll be back in February. Same tap, one semester behind.

If you sign in

Somebody messages you this week. You show up regularly. By November you're the one answering the questions.

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