Hi @Samarth and @aash.u7707 , thanks for your thoughtful questions!
Also, as an update: we have submitted the org application, and we will know if we are participating by Feb 18th. We’ve also added some more notes on process and timeline here.
Now, the questions!
@Samarth asks:
I hope custom project proposals are welcome this year
Yes, they are!
I’m preparing early for GSoC 2026 and wanted to sanity-check an idea before the official project list is published.
With regard to front-end hardening, I think either the p5.js website or the p5.js editor would be good projects to consider. We do have the ideas list published now, but this year we are definitely happy to receive custom project proposals, and the ideas list is intended to help understand major open areas of work. There are two project directions there (translation process on website and e2e tests on editor) that might be interesting to look into - they both have some background info links.
If you’re interested in working on small fixes on the website: there is an accessibility steward (gh/@coseeian) who has been filing accessibility issues using the below labels - if this is of interest, you could also work on some of these. Typically, @coseeian makes “High Severity” fixes themselves, but the others tend to be open. You can also check out merged/closed issues with these labels for ideas. Although @coseeian is not a GSoC mentor, they are happy to steward contributors on the accessibility topics, and it might be a good place to get inspired about website improvements, esp maintainability and theme hardening.
I’ll also ping the related mentors to comment about fit, and open work on the editor you could try out; Claire Peng (mentor for e2e idea) was also interested in supporting e2e testing for the website (#827) and is more familiar with current Editor work than I am. If this particular area is of interest I can also coordinate with @coseeian about ongoing work to check where there’s no overlaps and a good fit.
@aash.u7707 asks:
I’ve been contributing recently (p5.js WebGL + docs) and was wondering if there are any areas or types of issues you’d recommend focusing on right now in p5.js or p5.js-website. Happy to help wherever it’s most useful.
Awesome, thank you! Documentation improvements are always appreciated and a great place to start. Additionally, if you’re not already on the Discord, it might be useful to monitor the contribute channel and help review tasks that you have familiarity with. Review and feedback are extremely important parts of the contributor process.
We do not require PRs in GSoC applications, though they are welcome; we also welcome evidence of contribution and community participation through:
- helpful, friendly, and technically thorough feedback in others’ PRs (when it’s in a technical topic you’re familiar with) is an extremely strong, positive part of an application. This is probably the most helpful thing, as you can see there are many PRs and longer wait times for review when too few people are able to review. Carefully picking PRs you have the technical knowledge to review and leaving a helpful comment is great, and helps make the overall development process a bit smoother for everyone!
- testing release candidates. Both for p5.js 1.x and 2.x, you can check releases page and looks for “x.y.z-rc.x” versions that are ready for testing. Particularly noting the change-log and testing the areas affected, then filing issues reporting any bugs you find. Finding an obscure bugs in a release candidate is extremely appreciated!
Even if you’re new to the community, if you’re familiar with some specific part of p5.js, I want to encourage you to get involved in all the different parts of open source development - which is definitely not limited to writing code / making PRs.
General note about github comments, reviews, and PRs
A general reminder for everyone reading, because I mentioned reviews and comments as an important form of contribution: fully or largely AI-generated PRs may be closed, and are not in line with the AI usage policy. The same goes for issue comments or PR reviews - please do not over-rely on LLMs. This defeats the purpose of multiple perspectives during discussion or review. Comments that appear to overuse AI and do not add to the discussion may be hidden or marked as spam. I know there are different policies in different orgs, and I am happy to answer any questions anyone might have about this.
I’ll be back on this thread every few days (more frequently if we are accepted into GSoC) to answer your questions as well as I can.
Best,
Kit