Making it easier for new contributors and LLMs to get started in BlueDot

[codeluggage]

This issue is a general call for improvements for AI-enabled editors to make the onboarding and "time-to-first-commit" as short as possible for new contributors using editors like Cursor or Windsurf or extensions like Cline.

A potential follow-up issue could be to address how OpenAI Codex and the way users can give repo access through their ChatGPT account in order to make it easy for agents to pick up small and simple issues and have the full understanding of the way work is done in the repo.

PS: I created this issue through the Github Pull Requests extension in VSCode/Windsurf - any feedback on whether it works well or not is very welcome! :)

[codeluggage]

Looks like the labels didn't work - but I can't edit labels here on the github website either, so I'm suspecting that it's a permission based thing. This is what the issue looked like in my editor before I submitted it:

[codeluggage]

When attempting to open a PR through that Github Pull Requests extension (windsurf specific link - vscode specific here) I got this error - but creating the PR from my fork worked fine. Not too unexpected, and probably not worth the time to look into it. Posting for posterity.

Although you appear to have the correct authorization credentials, the 'bluedotimpact organization has enabled Auth App access restrictions, meaning that data access to third-parties is limited. For more information on these restrictions, including how to enable this app, visit https://docs.github.com/articles/restricting-access-to-your-organization-s-data/

[somepersonnamedjosh]

Thanks codeluggage for this thoughtful contribution! You've clearly put a lot of work into understanding how different AI editors can work with our codebase.

We're moving this to Discussions because it raises important strategic questions about how BlueDot should approach AI-assisted development:

• Should we standardize on specific AI tools/editors?
• How do we maintain these rules as our codebase evolves?
• Is there a simpler approach that achieves similar benefits?

Your implementation gives us a neat starting point for this conversation. Would love to hear from others using AI tools with our codebase (like our SWE contractors) - what's working, what's challenging, and how we might best support this going forward!