Contributing to SUEWS

June 26, 2026 · View on GitHub

We welcome contributions from people who engage with the project. To keep the issue tracker and pull request queue manageable, we have a few ground rules.

Interaction limits

GitHub interaction limits are enabled on this repository. Only prior contributors — users who have previously committed, opened or commented on issues, or had a pull request merged — can open new issues, pull requests, or comments.

If you are new to SUEWS and would like to contribute:

  1. Start on the forum. Post on the SUEWS Community Forum to introduce yourself and your idea. A maintainer will add you as a collaborator once we've established a working relationship.
  2. Read the development guide. See dev-ref/onboarding-guide.md for the development workflow, coding standards, and how to set up your environment.
  3. Coordinate before submitting a PR. All non-trivial changes should be discussed in an issue before work begins.

Changes that affect model physics

If your PR changes model physics or moves a reference output (touching suews_phys_*.f95, refreshing a vendored reference fixture, or changing a physics-affecting default), it must carry recorded scientific evidence. Add a ## Scientific evidence section to the PR description stating which quantities change and why, a before/after comparison of the affected outputs, and the expected sign and magnitude with physical reasoning; refresh any moved reference fixture in the same PR; and obtain sign-off from the subsystem owner where one exists (e.g. STEBBS). Such PRs are labelled 0-physics:change and run the full physics test tier before merge. See .claude/rules/physics-change-evidence.md for the full policy.

AI-generated contributions

Unsolicited AI-generated issues, pull requests, or "offers to help" from users who have not previously engaged with the project will be closed without review. This includes submissions that scan open-source repositories for superficial issues and propose automated fixes without understanding the codebase.

We value thoughtful, human-driven contributions. If you use AI tools to assist your work, that is fine — but the contribution should reflect genuine understanding of the problem and the project.

Reporting bugs

If you cannot open an issue due to interaction limits, please report bugs on the Community Forum. Maintainers will triage forum posts and create GitHub issues where appropriate.