github-contributor

1# GitHub Contributor
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3A phase-based playbook for shipping pull requests that maintainers actually want to merge. The skill is structured around the real PR lifecycle — discovery → implementation → quality gates → description → post-submission — because each phase has its own failure modes and the most common mistake is doing the right thing at the wrong phase (e.g., writing the perfect description for a PR that's 10× too large).
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5## Phase 0 — When to use this skill
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7Use this skill when **all** of these are true:
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9- You are contributing to a repo you do **not** maintain (the maintainer can close your PR without explanation).
10- The work touches one or more of: source code, tests, docs, build config.
11- You want the PR merged, not just submitted.
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13Do **not** use this for: your own repos, internal team PRs with shared context, hot-fix branches where a maintainer is waiting on you, or trivial single-line changes (one comment is enough).
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15## Phase 1 — Pre-PR Discovery
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17The most common reason PRs get closed is a mismatch between what the contributor assumes is acceptable and what the maintainer has already written down. Solve this before writing code.
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19### Step 1.1 — Read CONTRIBUTING.md as a hard contract
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21CONTRIBUTING.md is **not** style advice. Treat every numbered rule as a precondition for merge. Pay special attention to:
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