Contributing to BetterAuth

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Better Auth! This guide is a concise guide to contributing to Better Auth.

Getting Started

Before diving in, here are a few important resources:

Take a look at our existing issues and pull requests
Join our community discussions in Discord

Development Setup

To get started with development:

Make sure you have Node.JS installed, preferably on LTS.

1. Fork the repository

Visit https://github.com/better-auth/better-auth

Click the "Fork" button in the top right.

2. Clone your fork

# Replace YOUR-USERNAME with your GitHub username
git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/better-auth.git
cd better-auth

3. Install dependencies

Make sure you have pnpm installed!

pnpm install

4. Prepare ENV files

Copy the example env file to create your new .env file.

cp -n ./docs/.env.example ./docs/.env

Making changes

Once you have an idea of what you want to contribute, you can start making changes. Here are some steps to get started:

1. Create a new branch

# Make sure you're on main
git checkout main
 
# Pull latest changes
git pull upstream main
 
# Create and switch to a new branch
git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name

2. Start development server

Start the development server:

pnpm dev

To start the docs server:

pnpm -F docs dev

3. Make Your Changes

Make your changes to the codebase.
Write tests if needed. (Read more about testing here)
Update documentation. (Read more about documenting here)

Issues and Bug Fixes

Check our GitHub issues for tasks labeled good first issue
When reporting bugs, include steps to reproduce and expected behavior
Comment on issues you'd like to work on to avoid duplicate efforts

Framework Integrations

We welcome contributions to support more frameworks:

Focus on framework-agnostic solutions where possible
Keep integrations minimal and maintainable
All integrations currently live in the main package

Plugin Development

For core plugins: Open an issue first to discuss your idea
For community plugins: Feel free to develop independently
Follow our plugin architecture guidelines

Documentation

Fix typos and errors
Add examples and clarify existing content
Ensure documentation is up-to-date with code changes

Testing

We use Vitest for testing. Place test files next to the source files they test:

import { describe, it, expect } from "vitest";
import { getTestInstance } from "./test-utils/test-instance";
 
describe("Feature", () => {
    it("should work as expected", async () => {
        const { client } = getTestInstance();
        // Test code here
        expect(result).toBeDefined();
    });
});