How to contribute

March 4, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Did you find a bug?

  • Ensure the bug was not already reported by searching on GitHub under Issues.
  • If you're unable to find an open issue addressing the problem, open a new one. Be sure to include a title and clear description, as much relevant information as possible, and a code sample or an executable test case demonstrating the expected behavior that is not occurring.
  • Be sure to add the complete error messages.

Do you have a feature request?

  • Ensure that it hasn't been yet implemented in the main branch of the repository and that there's not an Issue requesting it yet.
  • Open a new issue and make sure to describe it clearly, mention how it improves the project and why its useful.

Do you want to fix a bug or implement a feature?

Bug fixes and features are added through pull requests (PRs).

PR submission guidelines

  • Keep each PR focused. While it's more convenient, do not combine several unrelated fixes together. Create as many branches as needing to keep each PR focused.
  • Ensure that your PR includes a test that fails without your patch, and passes with it.
  • Ensure the PR description clearly describes the problem and solution. Include the relevant issue number if applicable.
  • Do not mix style changes/fixes with "functional" changes. It's very difficult to review such PRs and it most likely get rejected.
  • Do not add/remove vertical whitespace. Preserve the original style of the file you edit as much as you can.
  • Do not turn an already submitted PR into your development playground. If after you submitted PR, you discovered that more work is needed - close the PR, do the required work and then submit a new PR. Otherwise each of your commits requires attention from maintainers of the project.
  • If, however, you submitted a PR and received a request for changes, you should proceed with commits inside that PR, so that the maintainer can see the incremental fixes and won't need to review the whole PR again. In the exception case where you realize it'll take many many commits to complete the requests, then it's probably best to close the PR, do the work and then submit it again. Use common sense where you'd choose one way over another.

Local setup for working on a PR

Clone the repository

  • HTTPS: git clone https://github.com/Nixtla/nixtla.git
  • SSH: git clone git@github.com:Nixtla/nixtla.git
  • GitHub CLI: gh repo clone Nixtla/nixtla

Set up an environment

Create a virtual environment to install the library's dependencies. We recommend astral's uv. Once you've created the virtual environment you should activate it and then install the library in editable mode along with its development dependencies.

pip install uv
uv venv --python 3.11
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -Ue .[dev]

# If you plan to contribute to documentation, you will also need to install the
# distributed dependencies in addition to the dev dependencies
uv pip install -Ue .[dev,distributed]

Set Up Nixtla API Key

This library uses python-dotenv for development. To set up your Nixtla API key, add the following lines to your .env file:

NIXTLA_API_KEY=<your token>
  • NOTE: You can get your Nixtla API key by logging into Nixtla Dashboard where you can get few API calls for free. If you need more API calls for development purpose, please write to support@nixtla.io.

Install pre-commit

pre-commit install
pre-commit run --show-diff-on-failure --files nixtla/*

Viewing documentation locally

The documentation is built using Mintlify. To view the documentation locally, you can use the Mintlify CLI.

npm install -g mintlify

cd timegpt-docs
mint dev

Running tests

pytest nixtla_tests

If you're working on the local interface you can just use pytest nixtla_tests

Do you want to contribute to the documentation?

You can add new tutorials, how-to-guides, examples, or improve existing ones.

Modifying an existing doc

For scripts

  • Update the relevant document in the timegpt-docs folder.
  • The Mintlify Bot will automatically create a preview deployment for your PR, so you can check your changes there.

For notebooks

  1. Find the relevant notebook.
  2. Make your changes.
  3. Run all cells.
  4. Add, commit and push the changes.
  5. Open a PR.