Ask HN: What makes you contribute to small open source projects?

Hi HN,

I’ve been curious about this as I recently started maintaining my open source project.

I’m trying to understand what actually makes people decide to contribute to projects in particular — not the big, well-known ones.

For context: I’ve tried to do the “obvious” things — writing a clear README, keeping the scope focused, adding tests and CI, and labeling a few issues as beginner-friendly.

Still, it feels like there’s a big gap between using an open source tool and taking the step to contribute.

I’ve also tried posting about it here, but it feels like people don’t really like self-promotion — or maybe I’m just doing it wrong.

Have you worked on open source projects before? And how did you find the project you contributed to?