This week, I made my first contribution to an open-source project, and it was a much more interesting experience than I expected.
I contributed to Orbit Board, a project from the Kalvium community. While working with the project, I came across a problem with deleting cards. Instead of being deleted correctly, the operation could result in a server error.
At first, it looked like a small bug, but understanding why it was happening required me to trace the flow from the UI to the server-side logic.
I found that the deletion logic in dataStore.deleteCard was looking for the wrong property. The code was using card.cardId, while the actual card object used card.id. Because of this mismatch, the expected card could not be found correctly.
I fixed the property lookup and also added a proper 404 check for cases where the requested card does not exist. I also removed an old bug notice from the UI because it was no longer relevant after fixing the problem.
I worked on the change in my own branch:
fix/delete-card-crash
and created Pull Request #18 with the changes.
🔗 Pull Request:
PR #18 — Fix server error when deleting a card
One thing I learned from this contribution is that debugging isn't always about writing a lot of code. Sometimes the important part is understanding how data moves through an application and finding a small mismatch that causes a bigger problem.
I also used AI during the process to help me understand parts of the code and think through possible causes. But I didn't treat the suggestions as automatically correct. I checked the existing implementation, traced the actual data flow, made the change, and verified the result myself.
The hardest part for me was getting comfortable navigating an unfamiliar codebase. I had to understand the project structure before I could confidently change anything.
This contribution also taught me that an open-source contribution doesn't have to be a huge feature. A small bug fix that solves a real problem is still meaningful.
This is my first step into open source, and I'm looking forward to making more contributions and taking on slightly bigger issues next time.
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