How to start contributing to open source AI marketing projects

Want to shape AI’s future? Begin with the most valuable part of the project.

Here’s where things get really exciting – you stop being just another user and start actually building the future of your industry using open source.

In part one of this series, we explored three open source AI marketing tools for running campaigns and automations. In part two, we shift from using these tools to shaping them, with concrete steps to contribute code, documentation, and ideas so you can help these projects grow.

Code contributions that make an impact

Ready to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with some code? 

Don’t worry if you’re not a hardcore developer – there are plenty of ways your contributions can actually move the needle. Start with plugin development for tools like Mautic and Matomo.

Creating plugins lets you add features, integrations, or automations that help marketers personalize campaigns or gather better insights. It’s like building exactly what you wish existed when you were struggling with those tools.

If AI is more your thing, check out Hugging Face repositories, where improving machine learning models is always needed.  Whether it’s fine-tuning sentiment analysis, improving language understanding, or creating new marketing-focused models, your work pushes the boundaries of what AI can do for marketing teams.

Here’s something most people overlook: Technical documentation is incredibly valuable.

Writing clear, straightforward guides for AI integration is like handing a flashlight to users wandering in the dark. From my experience, good documentation often matters more than fancy features – people can’t use what they can’t understand.

Performance optimizations and bug fixes keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes, making everyone’s experience better. Jump in wherever your skills fit and you’ll be surprised how much difference even small improvements can make.

Read more: 3 open source alternatives to expensive AI marketing tools

Real projects that need your marketing expertise

Here are three solid places where your marketing knowledge can really help the open source community.

Mautic: Marketing automation made simple

Mautic’s GitHub repository is constantly looking for help with its email automation features. 

When I first browsed their issues, I found plenty of “good first issue” tags on things like plugin improvements and integration fixes, which is the kind of stuff that actually makes the platform work better for marketers.

The beauty of contributing here is that you’re fixing problems you probably face daily. Email templates that render weirdly, integrations that break randomly, automation workflows that don’t quite work how you’d expect. 

Jump in and you’re not just writing code, you’re fixing real marketing problems and building the future of open source AI.

Matomo: Analytics that make sense

Matomo’s community repository has ongoing work around its visitor tracking and dashboard features. 

If you’re into the data side of marketing, this is where you’d want to poke around. They regularly need help with analytics widgets and reporting features that marketing teams rely on daily.

What I love about Matomo contributions is how directly they impact decision-making. Better reporting widgets mean clearer insights. Improved tracking means more accurate data. When you fix something here, marketers everywhere get better at their jobs.

Hugging Face: AI models for marketing minds

Hugging Face also has a GitHub repository that hosts loads of marketing-relevant AI models, especially around sentiment analysis and text processing. 

The beauty here is that you can take existing tools and models and adapt them for specific marketing use cases. This could be analyzing customer feedback, social media mentions, or campaign performance data. This is also where things get exciting if you’re already using AI tools for content creation. 

You’re not just using pre-built solutions. Instead, you’re actually improving the models that power these tools. Fine-tune a sentiment analysis model to better understand your industry’s language, or adapt text generation models to match your brand voice.

The key is picking projects where you’d actually use the end result. 

When you’re solving problems you genuinely face with your current AI workflow, the contribution feels less like work and more like building tools you wish existed. If you’re struggling with email automation, work on Mautic. If analytics dashboards frustrate you, dive into Matomo.

Getting started with open source contributions

Contributing to open source feels scary at first, like showing up to a party where everyone already knows each other. But here’s the secret: Most maintainers are actually desperate for help and incredibly welcoming to newcomers.

Start by hunting for “good first issue” labels on the above GitHub repositories. These are basically training wheels, well-documented, beginner-friendly tasks that won’t break anything important. 

Some specific examples of these issues include: 

• Code snippet builder button has an invalid ID and is unreadable in dark mode.
• Segment filter shows non-editable “and/or” selector in the UI.
• Dark mode display issues on new Projects feature.
• Error when adjusting contact points in forms.

Perfect for learning how a project works without accidentally destroying someone’s weekend.

Join communities, too. Most projects have Discord servers, Slack channels, or forums where the real conversations happen. Don’t just lurk – ask questions, share what you’re learning, and help other newcomers when you can.

How to make your first contributions count:

• Fix documentation that confused you during setup
• Write integration guides for tools you’ve connected
• Report bugs with detailed reproduction steps
• Answer questions from other developers in forums
• Share configuration examples and best practices

The magic happens when you start sharing knowledge. That weird integration you figured out? Write it up. That bug you spent three hours debugging? Document the solution. 

Other developers will love you for it, and maintainers will start remembering your name. Plus, you get early access to new features and direct influence on what gets built next.

Start shaping the future

Contributing isn’t just about code, it’s about community. Whether you’re fixing a typo in the docs or releasing a new plugin, every pull request makes an open source project stronger for everyone.

Start small, stay curious, and you’ll quickly move from casual user to valued collaborator. What you’ll find is that  the best way to predict the future of these tools is to help build them.

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