Ideally, you'd be able to: * Read any developer contribution docs. * Glean what info you can from the layout and naming of the source tree. * Peruse the code

Ideally, you'd be able to: * Read any developer contribution docs. * Glean what info you can from the layout and naming of the source tree. * Peruse the code and any comments and see what does what. * Read the unit tests to see how things are expected to work. * Peruse the issues list to see what's breaking. * Try to get a feel for how the contributor(s) think by reading any public blog posts, etc. If none of those approaches yield any insight, don't blame yourself; maybe instead look for a different OSS project to contribute to.