llama-stack-mirror/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Llama-Stack

We want to make contributing to this project as easy and transparent as possible.

Discussions -> Issues -> Pull Requests

We actively welcome your pull requests. However, please read the following. This is heavily inspired by Ghostty.

If in doubt, please open a discussion; we can always convert that to an issue later.

I'd like to contribute!

If you are new to the project, start by looking at the issues tagged with "good first issue". If you're interested leave a comment on the issue and a triager will assign it to you.

Please avoid picking up too many issues at once. This helps you stay focused and ensures that others in the community also have opportunities to contribute.

• Try to work on only 1–2 issues at a time, especially if you’re still getting familiar with the codebase.
• Before taking an issue, check if it’s already assigned or being actively discussed.
• If you’re blocked or can’t continue with an issue, feel free to unassign yourself or leave a comment so others can step in.

I have a bug!

1. Search the issue tracker and discussions for similar issues.
2. If you don't have steps to reproduce, open a discussion.
3. If you have steps to reproduce, open an issue.

I have an idea for a feature!

1. Open a discussion.

I've implemented a feature!

1. If there is an issue for the feature, open a pull request.
2. If there is no issue, open a discussion and link to your branch.

I have a question!

1. Open a discussion or use Discord.

Opening a Pull Request

1. Fork the repo and create your branch from main.
2. If you've changed APIs, update the documentation.
3. Ensure the test suite passes.
4. Make sure your code lints using pre-commit.
5. If you haven't already, complete the Contributor License Agreement ("CLA").
6. Ensure your pull request follows the conventional commits format.
7. Ensure your pull request follows the coding style.

Please keep pull requests (PRs) small and focused. If you have a large set of changes, consider splitting them into logically grouped, smaller PRs to facilitate review and testing.

Tip

As a general guideline:

• Experienced contributors should try to keep no more than 5 open PRs at a time.
• New contributors are encouraged to have only one open PR at a time until they’re familiar with the codebase and process.

Contributor License Agreement ("CLA")

In order to accept your pull request, we need you to submit a CLA. You only need to do this once to work on any of Meta's open source projects.

Complete your CLA here: https://code.facebook.com/cla

Issues

We use GitHub issues to track public bugs. Please ensure your description is clear and has sufficient instructions to be able to reproduce the issue.

Meta has a bounty program for the safe disclosure of security bugs. In those cases, please go through the process outlined on that page and do not file a public issue.

Set up your development environment

We use uv to manage python dependencies and virtual environments. You can install uv by following this guide.

You can install the dependencies by running:

cd llama-stack
uv sync --group dev
uv pip install -e .
source .venv/bin/activate

Note

You can use a specific version of Python with uv by adding the --python <version> flag (e.g. --python 3.12) Otherwise, uv will automatically select a Python version according to the requires-python section of the pyproject.toml. For more info, see the uv docs around Python versions.

Note that you can create a dotenv file .env that includes necessary environment variables:

LLAMA_STACK_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8321
LLAMA_STACK_CLIENT_LOG=debug
LLAMA_STACK_PORT=8321
LLAMA_STACK_CONFIG=<provider-name>
TAVILY_SEARCH_API_KEY=
BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY=

And then use this dotenv file when running client SDK tests via the following:

uv run --env-file .env -- pytest -v tests/integration/inference/test_text_inference.py --text-model=meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct

Pre-commit Hooks

We use pre-commit to run linting and formatting checks on your code. You can install the pre-commit hooks by running:

uv run pre-commit install

After that, pre-commit hooks will run automatically before each commit.

Alternatively, if you don't want to install the pre-commit hooks, you can run the checks manually by running:

uv run pre-commit run --all-files

Caution

Before pushing your changes, make sure that the pre-commit hooks have passed successfully.

Running tests

You can find the Llama Stack testing documentation here.

Adding a new dependency to the project

To add a new dependency to the project, you can use the uv command. For example, to add foo to the project, you can run:

uv add foo
uv sync

Coding Style

• Comments should provide meaningful insights into the code. Avoid filler comments that simply describe the next step, as they create unnecessary clutter, same goes for docstrings.
• Prefer comments to clarify surprising behavior and/or relationships between parts of the code rather than explain what the next line of code does.
• Catching exceptions, prefer using a specific exception type rather than a broad catch-all like Exception.
• Error messages should be prefixed with "Failed to ..."
• 4 spaces for indentation rather than tab
• When using # noqa to suppress a style or linter warning, include a comment explaining the justification for bypassing the check.
• When using # type: ignore to suppress a mypy warning, include a comment explaining the justification for bypassing the check.
• Don't use unicode characters in the codebase. ASCII-only is preferred for compatibility or readability reasons.
• Providers configuration class should be Pydantic Field class. It should have a description field that describes the configuration. These descriptions will be used to generate the provider documentation.
• When possible, use keyword arguments only when calling functions.

Common Tasks

Some tips about common tasks you work on while contributing to Llama Stack:

Using llama stack build

Building a stack image (conda / docker) will use the production version of the llama-stack and llama-stack-client packages. If you are developing with a llama-stack repository checked out and need your code to be reflected in the stack image, set LLAMA_STACK_DIR and LLAMA_STACK_CLIENT_DIR to the appropriate checked out directories when running any of the llama CLI commands.

Example:

cd work/
git clone https://github.com/meta-llama/llama-stack.git
git clone https://github.com/meta-llama/llama-stack-client-python.git
cd llama-stack
LLAMA_STACK_DIR=$(pwd) LLAMA_STACK_CLIENT_DIR=../llama-stack-client-python llama stack build --template <...>

Updating distribution configurations

If you have made changes to a provider's configuration in any form (introducing a new config key, or changing models, etc.), you should run ./scripts/distro_codegen.py to re-generate various YAML files as well as the documentation. You should not change docs/source/.../distributions/ files manually as they are auto-generated.

Updating the provider documentation

If you have made changes to a provider's configuration, you should run ./scripts/provider_codegen.py to re-generate the documentation. You should not change docs/source/.../providers/ files manually as they are auto-generated. Note that the provider "description" field will be used to generate the provider documentation.

Building the Documentation

If you are making changes to the documentation at https://llama-stack.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, you can use the following command to build the documentation and preview your changes. You will need Sphinx and the readthedocs theme.

# This rebuilds the documentation pages.
uv run --group docs make -C docs/ html

# This will start a local server (usually at http://127.0.0.1:8000) that automatically rebuilds and refreshes when you make changes to the documentation.
uv run --group docs sphinx-autobuild docs/source docs/build/html --write-all

Update API Documentation

If you modify or add new API endpoints, update the API documentation accordingly. You can do this by running the following command:

uv run ./docs/openapi_generator/run_openapi_generator.sh

The generated API documentation will be available in docs/_static/. Make sure to review the changes before committing.

License

By contributing to Llama, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree.