🐫 Welcome to CAMEL! 🐫
Thank you for your interest in contributing to the CAMEL project! 🎉 We're excited to have your support. As an open-source initiative in a rapidly evolving and open-ended field, we wholeheartedly welcome contributions of all kinds. Whether you want to introduce new features, enhance the infrastructure, improve documentation, asking issues, add more examples, implement state-of-the-art research ideas, or fix bugs, we appreciate your enthusiasm and efforts. 🙌 You are welcome to join our discord for more efficient communication. 💬
- English speakers: Mondays at 5 PM GMT+1. Join via Discord: Meeting Link
- Chinese Speakers: Mondays at 9 PM UTC+8. Join via Zoom: Meeting Link
If you're eager to contribute to this project, that's fantastic! We're thrilled to have your support.
- If you are a contributor from the community:
- Follow the Fork-and-Pull-Request workflow when opening your pull requests.
- If you are a member of CAMEL-AI.org:
- Follow the Checkout-and-Pull-Request workflow when opening your pull request; this will allow the PR to pass all tests that require GitHub Secrets.
Make sure to mention any related issues and tag the relevant maintainers too. 💪
Before your pull request can be merged, it must pass the formatting, linting, and testing checks. You can find instructions on running these checks locally under the Common Actions section below. 🔍
Ensuring excellent documentation and thorough testing is absolutely crucial. Here are some guidelines to follow based on the type of contribution you're making:
- If you fix a bug:
- Add a relevant unit test when possible. These can be found in the
test
directory.
- Add a relevant unit test when possible. These can be found in the
- If you make an improvement:
- Update any affected example console scripts in the
examples
directory, Gradio demos in theapps
directory, and documentation in thedocs
directory. - Update unit tests when relevant.
- Update any affected example console scripts in the
- If you add a feature:
- Include unit tests in the
test
directory. - Add a demo script in the
examples
directory.
- Include unit tests in the
We're a small team focused on building great things. If you have something in mind that you'd like to add or modify, opening a pull request is the ideal way to catch our attention. 🚀
This part outlines the guidelines and best practices for conducting code reviews in CAMEL. The aim is to ensure that all contributions are of high quality, align with the project's goals, and are consistent with our coding standards.
- Maintain Code Quality: Ensure that the codebase remains clean, readable, and maintainable.
- Knowledge Sharing: Facilitate knowledge sharing among contributors and help new contributors learn best practices.
- Bug Prevention: Catch potential bugs and issues before they are merged into the main branch.
- Consistency: Ensure consistency in style, design patterns, and architecture across the project.
- Reviewers should check the code for functionality, readability, consistency, and compliance with the project’s coding standards.
- If changes are necessary, the reviewer should leave constructive feedback.
- The contributor addresses feedback and updates the PR.
- The reviewer re-reviews the updated code.
- Once the code is approved by at least two reviewer, it can be merged into the main branch.
- Merging should be done by a maintainer or an authorized contributor.
-
Functionality
- Correctness: Does the code perform the intended task? Are edge cases handled?
- Testing: Is there sufficient test coverage? Do all tests pass?
- Security: Are there any security vulnerabilities introduced by the change?
- Performance: Does the code introduce any performance regressions?
-
Code Quality
- Readability: Is the code easy to read and understand? Is it well-commented where necessary?
- Maintainability: Is the code structured in a way that makes future changes easy?
- Style: Does the code follow the project’s style guidelines? Currently we use Ruff for format check and take Google Python Style Guide as reference.
- Documentation: Are public methods, classes, and any complex logic well-documented?
-
Design
- Consistency: Does the code follow established design patterns and project architecture?
- Modularity: Are the changes modular and self-contained? Does the code avoid unnecessary duplication?
- Dependencies: Are dependencies minimized and used appropriately?
- Timely Reviews: Reviewers should strive to review PRs promptly to keep the project moving.
- Constructive Feedback: Provide feedback that is clear, constructive, and aimed at helping the contributor improve.
- Collaboration: Work with the contributor to address any issues and ensure the final code meets the project’s standards.
- Approvals: Only approve code that you are confident meets all the necessary criteria.
- Large PRs: Avoid submitting PRs that are too large. Break down your changes into smaller, manageable PRs if possible.
- Ignoring Feedback: Address all feedback provided by reviewers, even if you don’t agree with it—discuss it instead of ignoring it.
- Rushed Reviews: Avoid rushing through reviews. Taking the time to thoroughly review code is critical to maintaining quality.
Code reviews are an essential part of maintaining the quality and integrity of our open source project. By following these guidelines, we can ensure that CAMEL remains robust, secure, and easy to maintain, while also fostering a collaborative and welcoming community.
At CAMEL, we manage our project through a structured workflow that ensures efficiency and clarity in our development process. Our workflow includes stages for issue creation and pull requests (PRs), sprint planning, and reviews.
Our issues page on GitHub is regularly updated with bugs, improvements, and feature requests. We have a handy set of labels to help you sort through and find issues that interest you. Feel free to use these labels to keep things organized.
When you start working on an issue, please assign it to yourself so that others know it's being taken care of.
When creating a new issue, it's best to keep it focused on a specific bug, improvement, or feature. If two issues are related or blocking each other, it's better to link them instead of merging them into one.
We do our best to keep these issues up to date, but considering the fast-paced nature of this field, some may become outdated. If you come across any such issues, please give us a heads-up so we can address them promptly. 👀
Here’s how to engage with our issues effectively:
- Go to GitHub Issues, create a new issue, choose the category, and fill in the required information.
- Ensure the issue has a proper title and update the Assignees, Labels, Projects (select Backlog status), Development, and Milestones.
- Discuss the issue during team meetings, then move it to the Analysis Done column.
- At the beginning of each sprint, share the analyzed issue and move it to the Sprint Planned column if you are going to work on this issue in the sprint.
- Go to GitHub Pulls, create a new PR, choose the branch, and fill in the information, linking the related issue.
- Ensure the PR has a proper title and update the Reviewers (convert to draft), Assignees, Labels, Projects (select Developing status), Development, and Milestones.
- If the PR is related to a roadmap, link the roadmap to the PR.
- Move the PR item through the stages: Developing, Stuck, Reviewing (click ready for review), Merged. The linked issue will close automatically when the PR is merged.
Labeling PRs:
- feat: For new features (e.g.,
feat: Add new AI model
) - fix: For bug fixes (e.g.,
fix: Resolve memory leak issue
) - docs: For documentation updates (e.g.,
docs: Update contribution guidelines
) - style: For code style changes (e.g.,
style: Refactor code formatting
) - refactor: For code refactoring (e.g.,
refactor: Optimize data processing
) - test: For adding or updating tests (e.g.,
test: Add unit tests for new feature
) - chore: For maintenance tasks (e.g.,
chore: Update dependencies
)
Sprint planning defines what can be delivered in the sprint and how it will be achieved. Sprint review allows stakeholders to review and provide feedback on recent work.
- Sprint Duration: Two weeks for development, one week for review.
- Sprint Planning & Review: Conducted biweekly during the dev meeting (around 30 minutes).
- Planning: Founder highlights the sprint goal and key points; developers pick items for the sprint.
- Review: Feedback on delivered features and identification of improvement areas.
Our aim is to make the developer setup as straightforward as possible. If you encounter any challenges during the setup process, don't hesitate to reach out to a maintainer. We're here to assist you and ensure that the experience is smooth not just for you but also for future contributors. 😊
In line with this, we do have specific guidelines for code linting, formatting, and documentation in the codebase. If you find these requirements difficult or even just bothersome to work with, please feel free to get in touch with a maintainer. We don't want these guidelines to hinder the integration of good code into the codebase, so we're more than happy to provide support and find a solution that works for you. 🤝
To get started with CAMEL, follow these steps:
# Clone github repo
git clone https://github.com/camel-ai/camel.git
# Change directory into project directory
cd camel
# Activate camel virtual environment
poetry shell
# Install camel from source
poetry install --with dev,docs -E all # (Suggested for developers, needed to pass all tests)
# The following command installs a pre-commit hook into the local git repo,
# so every commit gets auto-formatted and linted.
pre-commit install
# Run camel's pre-commit before push
pre-commit run --all-files
# Run camel's unit tests
pytest test
# Exit the virtual environment
exit
These commands will install all the necessary dependencies for running the package, examples, linting, formatting, tests, and coverage.
To verify that everything is set up correctly, run pytest .
This will ensure that all tests pass successfully. ✅
Tip
You need to config different API Keys as environment variables to pass all tests.
Whenever you add, update, or delete any dependencies in pyproject.toml
, please run poetry lock
to synchronize the dependencies with the lock file.
poetry run ruff check .
poetry run ruff format .
For extra validation of type hints:
mypy --namespace-packages -p camel
mypy --namespace-packages -p test
mypy --namespace-packages -p examples
mypy --namespace-packages -p apps
Code coverage measures the extent to which unit tests cover the code, helping identify both robust and less robust areas of the codebase.
To generate a report showing the current code coverage, execute one of the following commands.
To include all source files into coverage:
coverage erase
coverage run --source=. -m pytest .
coverage html
# Open htmlcov/index.html
To include only tested files:
pytest --cov --cov-report=html
The coverage report will be generated at htmlcov/index.html
.
Unit tests cover modular logic that doesn't require calls to outside APIs. Currently, the test setup requires an OpenAI API key to test the framework, making them resemble integration tests.
To run all tests including those that use OpenAI API, use the following command:
pytest .
To quickly run only local isolated unit and integration tests:
pytest --fast-test-mode .
If you're developing with VSCode, make sure to create a .env
file in the repository root and include your OpenAI API key:
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-XXXXXXXX
OPENAI_API_BASE_URL=https://XXXXXXXX (Should you utilize an OpenAI proxy service, kindly specify this)
The documentation is primarily generated automatically by Sphinx using the code.
We kindly request that you provide comprehensive documentation for all classes and methods to ensure high-quality documentation coverage.
To build the documentation locally, follow these steps:
cd docs
make html
More guidelines about building and hosting documentations locally can be found here.
As of now, CAMEL is actively in development and just published preview version to PyPI.
CAMEL follows the semver versioning standard. As pre-1.0 software, even patch releases may contain non-backwards-compatible changes. Currently, the major version is 0, and the minor version is incremented. Releases are made once the maintainers feel that a significant body of changes has accumulated.
The source code of the CAMEL project is licensed under Apache 2.0. Your contributed code will be also licensed under Apache 2.0 by default. To add license to you code, you can manually copy-paste it from license_template.txt
to the head of your files or run the update_license.py
script to automate the process:
python licenses/update_license.py . licenses/license_template.txt
This script will add licenses to all the *.py
files or update the licenses if the existing licenses are not the same as license_template.txt
.
If your contribution has been included in a release, we'd love to give you credit on Twitter, but only if you're comfortable with it!
If you have a Twitter account that you would like us to mention, please let us know either in the pull request or through another communication method. We want to make sure you receive proper recognition for your valuable contributions. 😄