How XP works

XP is SkillIssues' record of the work you got merged. It counts merged pull requests to repositories in the catalog, and pays more for the issues that most need fixing. Opening pull requests earns very little, so spamming maintainers gets you nowhere.

Where it comes from

Once you sign in, SkillIssues reads your public pull requests on GitHub, using its own GitHub credential. It never asks for or stores yours. It keeps the pull requests to repositories in the catalog and ignores the rest.

• The first read goes through your whole history, so past work counts. Merges from before you signed up earn half the usual XP. That gives you a real level from day one without outranking people who did the work here.
• After that, it reads again every 15 minutes while you have an open pull request that moved this week, every hour while one is open, and daily otherwise. Check now on your profile asks for a read straight away, every few minutes at most.

What a merge earns

A merge earns a base amount, set by the hardest catalog issue the pull request closes. It counts as closing an issue when GitHub links them, for example with "Fixes #12" in the description.

The pull request	Base XP
Closes a beginner issue	75
Closes an intermediate issue	140
Closes an advanced issue	250
Closes an issue of unknown difficulty	100
Closes no catalog issue	50

On top of the base:

Bonus	XP
Your first merge in that repository	+15
The issue had been open six months or more when you fixed it	+50
The repository runs checks and they passed	+15
A maintainer approved it	+10, or +20 in a repository with no checks
It merged with no changes requested	+5, or +10 in a repository with no checks

A repository without checks is never penalised: its review bonuses are bigger, so the most a merge can gain from quality is the same either way. Merge XP is capped at 400 per repository per day.

For example: you fix a beginner issue that had been open for a year, in a repository you haven't merged in before. It has checks, they pass, and a maintainer approves it without asking for changes. That's 75 + 15 + 50 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 170 XP.

Opening a pull request

Opening a pull request that closes a catalog issue earns 5 XP. That's once per issue and at most three times a week. If the pull request is closed without being merged, the 5 XP is taken back.

What earns nothing

• Pull requests to your own repositories, or to an organisation's repositories you're a member of.
• Pull requests to repositories that aren't in the catalog.

They still show on your profile, marked with why.

Levels

Each level takes 100 XP more than the one before it: level 2 starts at 100 XP, level 3 at 300, level 4 at 600, level 5 at 1,000 and level 10 at 4,500. Your profile also shows a level for each language, from the XP earned in repositories whose main language it is.

Streaks

A streak counts the weeks in a row (Monday to Sunday, UTC) in which you had at least one merge. It stays alive until the end of the week after your last merge, so you always have a full week to keep it going.

Badges

Badges mark milestones:

• your first merge, then 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 merges;
• merges in 3 and 10 repositories, and in 3 and 5 languages;
• a documentation fix, an advanced fix, and a fix for an issue open six months or more;
• a 4-week and a 12-week streak;
• levels 5, 10 and 20.

Each one shows the date you earned it.

Quests

Quests are one-off goals. Each pays 50 XP, once, and only merges since you joined count towards them:

Quest	Done when
First merge here	A pull request of yours is merged in a catalog repository.
Called it	You claim an issue, then close it with a merged pull request.
Docs day	You close an issue labelled documentation.
Second language	You've merged in repositories of two different main languages.
Getting around	You've merged in three different repositories.
Busy month	You get three merges in one calendar month.
Backlog dive	You close an issue that had been open six months or more.

Learning paths

A learning path is five open issues for one kind of work: frontend, backend, documentation, DevOps, data or mobile. You get three for beginners, then two a step up. They come from different projects, and nobody is assigned to or has claimed any of them. Start one from Learning path in the top bar.

• A step is done when a pull request of yours that closes its issue is merged.
• Swap replaces a step you haven't done with another issue of the same level, for example if someone else got to it first. An issue you swap away isn't offered again on that path, so each swap brings a new one, until no other issue fits.
• Finishing all five earns 200 XP. You can have one path at a time, and Give up this path ends it, after asking. XP your merged pull requests earned stays.

Your public profile

Your profile is private unless you turn on Show my profile to anyone in Settings. Then anyone can see your level, XP, the badges you've earned (not the ones you haven't), languages and merged pull requests at /app/u/<your username>, and you can be listed on the leaderboard once it opens. Turn it off and the page goes, at once.

To find someone's profile, type their GitHub username in Search. It shows first, under People, if they've made it public.

The numbers can change

These are the current values. They can be tuned as we learn what works. A change applies to XP earned after it, and levels are always worked out from your XP as it stands. Your XP history is kept as a list of what each pull request earned and why, so nothing is recalculated behind your back.