An issue feed that surfaces the open-source contributions most likely to actually get merged.
- Sector
- Developer tools
- Year
- 2026
- Platform
- Web · App
- Scope
- Product strategy, UX & UI design, Merge Score model
Overview
FirstMerge is a developer tool that helps open-source contributors find beginner-friendly GitHub issues with real merge potential. It vets issues before surfacing them — checking that they're unclaimed, that the repo is actively maintained, and that maintainers accept outside contributions — and rolls those signals into a single Merge Score.
The challenge
Finding a good first issue on GitHub is a slog: most labelled issues are stale, already claimed, or sit in repos that never merge outside PRs. New contributors burn hours on dead ends. FirstMerge had to turn thousands of noisy issues into a ranked, trustworthy feed.
Our approach
We pull issues across languages through the GitHub API, score each one on maintenance activity, recency and claim status, and cache the results so the feed stays fast and fresh. Filters by language, popularity and issue size let contributors zero in, and verification timestamps make the data's freshness obvious.
What we did
- Product strategy
- UX & UI design
- Merge Score model
- Full-stack build
- GitHub API integration
Built with
Selected screens
Palette
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