Thank you for investing your time and effort in contributing to our project, we appreciate it a lot! 🤗

General Guidelines

If you want to contribute a bug fix or a new feature that isn't listed in the issues yet, please open a new issue for it and link it to your PR.
Follow Google's Best Practices for Java Libraries
Keep the code compatible with Java 8. We plan to increase the baseline to Java 17 a bit later.
Avoid adding new dependencies as much as possible. If absolutely necessary, try to use the same libraries which are already used in the project.
Write unit and/or integration tests for your code. This is critical: no tests, no review!
Avoid making breaking changes. Always keep backward compatibility in mind.
Follow existing naming conventions.
Add Javadoc where necessary. There's no need to duplicate Javadoc from the implemented interfaces.
Follow existing code style present in the project.
Large features should be discussed with maintainers before implementation. Please ping @langchain4j in the comments on the issue.

Priorities

All issues are prioritized by maintainers. There are 4 priorities: P1, P2, P3 and P4.

Please start with the higher priorities. PRs will be reviewed in order of priority, with bugs being a higher priority than new features.

Please note that we do not have the capacity to review all PRs immediately.

Link an issue to your PR. If there is no issue yet, open one.
Fill in all the sections of the PR template.
Make sure you've added tests.
Make sure you've added documentation where required.
For new big features, make sure you've added an example in the examples repository (as a separate PR, linked to the main one).
Please make it easier to review your PR:
- Keep changes as small as possible.
- Do not combine refactoring with changes in a single PR.
- Avoid reformatting existing code.

Integration with Anthropic is a good example.
Use the official SDK if available.
If the official SDK is not available, use Retrofit and Gson to implement the client.
Document the new integration here, here and here.
Add an example to the examples repository, similar to this.
Add a new module to the appropriate section of the BOM.
It would be great if you could add a Spring Boot starter.

Integration with Chroma is a good example.
Use the official SDK if available.
If the official SDK is not available, use Retrofit and Gson to implement the client.
{IntegrationName}EmbeddingStoreIT should extend from EmbeddingStoreWithFilteringIT or EmbeddingStoreIT and pass all tests.
Document the new integration here, here and here.
Add an example to the examples repository, similar to this.
Add a new module to the appropriate section of the BOM.
It would be great if you could add a Spring Boot starter.