My First Open Source Contribution Was to an Authentication Project — And It Was Surprisingly Friendly
Source: Dev.to
Why I expected it to be hard
My mental image of auth code was:
- Deeply abstracted layers
- Magic helpers everywhere
- Complicated middleware chains
- Unclear token flows
- Tons of hidden side effects
I expected to spend days just understanding the architecture before touching anything.
Instead, the code felt… normal
- Routes were clear.
- Business logic was readable.
- Types were explicit.
- The flow of data made sense.
That alone made contributing less intimidating.
Setup was boring (in a good way)
Getting the project running locally took only a few minutes:
- Install dependencies.
- Set two environment variables.
- Start the dev server.
No huge configuration matrix, hidden scripts, or cloud dependencies. This matters a lot for first‑time contributors—if setup is painful, people silently give up.
Once running, I could immediately hit endpoints, see responses, and understand how requests flow through the system.
Real auth concepts, not toy examples
What made this interesting wasn’t just code cleanliness—it was that the project implemented real authentication concepts:
- JWT access and refresh tokens
- Password hashing and validation
- OTP flows for verification and reset
- Rate limiting
- Database abstraction
- Redis caching (optional)
- Health checks and operational endpoints
These aren’t demo snippets—they’re the same building blocks used in production systems. Reading and touching real implementations teaches more than watching tutorials ever did for me.
The codebase felt contribution‑friendly
A few things made it easy to jump in:
- TypeScript everywhere — less guessing
- Logical folder structure
- Clear naming (no clever tricks)
- Small focused modules
- Minimal framework magic
- Easy to run tests and services locally
Even small improvements felt safe to attempt. For someone learning backend engineering or security fundamentals, this kind of codebase is gold.
It changed how I think about learning backend systems
Instead of building yet another side‑project auth system from scratch, contributing to a real open‑source codebase gave me:
- Exposure to real‑world patterns
- Better security intuition
- Cleaner architectural thinking
- Confidence reading large codebases
- Practical debugging experience
You learn how systems evolve, not just how they start.
If you’re curious to try contributing
If you’ve ever wanted to:
- Contribute to open source
- Understand authentication internals
- Improve backend engineering skills
- Learn how production systems are structured
…this kind of project is a great place to start. You don’t need to be a security expert. Small improvements, docs fixes, refactors, and tests are always valuable. I personally found it much less intimidating than I expected—and way more educational.
Project I contributed to
Tzylo Auth CE — Simple, lightweight, open‑source authentication server built with Node.js and TypeScript.
- GitHub:
- Docs: