Skip to content

Add community tutorial contribution guidelines - #5813

Draft
Henry Zou (henryzou50) wants to merge 14 commits into
mainfrom
contribute-tutorials
Draft

Henry Zou (henryzou50) wants to merge 14 commits into
mainfrom
contribute-tutorials

Conversation

@henryzou50

@henryzou50 Henry Zou (henryzou50) commented Oct 15, 2026 •

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Collaborator

Add community tutorial contribution guidelines

Draft for preview, not final policy. Adds a "Contribute a tutorial" page and a proposal issue template, revised from the "Contribution Requirement Draft" with separate Foundational and Applied requirements and a proposed approach for quantum information science (QIS).

Preview: https://qiskit.github.io/documentation/pr-NUMBER/docs/tutorials/contribute

Changes

  • docs/tutorials/contribute.mdx: new page covering
    • What can be contributed, by domain and by Foundational or Applied
    • Requirements for all tutorials, for Applied tutorials, and for Foundational tutorials
    • Foundational problems and open Foundational topics
    • Problem classes for optimization (QOBLIB), plus draft classes for Hamiltonian simulation and quantum machine learning (QML)
    • The two-stage process (proposal issue, then pull request) and the authorship and maintenance policy
  • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/tutorial-proposal.yaml: Stage 1 proposal form
  • docs/tutorials/_toc.json and docs/tutorials/index.mdx: link the new page
  • qiskit_bot.yaml: owners for the new page

Open questions for review

  1. Quantum information science (QIS). The page sets these rules:

    • Community contributors can write Foundational QIS tutorials, but only on the open topics listed on the page.
    • Those tutorials must meet the same Foundational requirements as the other domains.
    • Applied QIS tutorials are written only by the IBM Quantum team, because they build on IBM tools still in development.

    Opening every QIS topic could invite a flood of textbook-style tutorials, while closing QIS to the community would leave real gaps unfilled.

    Do these rules look good?

    The page also lists four potential open Foundational topics for QIS. Any feedback on these?

    • Phase estimation at scale without vendor tools
    • Device benchmarking with cross-entropy benchmarking and random circuit sampling
    • Error correction beyond the repetition code
    • Fidelity estimation and certification of large entangled states
  2. Applied circuit floor: at least 50 qubits and two-qubit depth 50. Are we good with this requirement?

  3. The page overall. Any general feedback on the "Contribute a tutorial" page? Preview: https://qiskit.github.io/documentation/pr-5813/docs/tutorials/contribute

    Should the published page stay more general, with most of the details moved to a separate contribute.md that lives only in this repository?

The Hamiltonian simulation and QML problem classes are our own drafts, and may change depending the working groups.

Generative AI disclosure

Drafted with help from Claude Code: page text, issue template, and this description.

Add a "Contribute a tutorial" page with Foundational and Applied
requirements, open topics, and problem classes, plus a Stage 1
tutorial proposal issue template. Link the page from the tutorials
index and table of contents, and add owners in qiskit_bot.yaml.
@qiskit-bot

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

One or more of the following people are relevant to this code:

  • @nathanearnestnoble

Put Foundational before Applied throughout, merge duplication rules,
add a dependency rule, apply the classical baseline to all Applied
tutorials, and limit each problem class to one community tutorial
per method family. Merge foundational problems, open topics, and
problem classes into one section by domain, give each open QIS topic
its own teaching problem, and show QOBLIB as a table.
Replace the three requirement sections with a short list for all
tutorials and one table comparing Foundational and Applied. Replace
the ecosystem dependency rule with an explicit list of approved
quantum packages, and show open topic and problem class counts in
the summary table.
Show the existing tutorials in each problem class so gaps are easy to
see, and stop calling the classes drafts. Add every quantum package
that current tutorials use to the approved list, let contributors
request new packages in their proposal, and allow Qiskit Functions in
any tutorial.
…M Quantum team

Steer community contributions in those domains to the problem classes, and say so in the summary table, the out-of-scope list, each domain section, and the proposal form.
Drop working-group references to problem classes and the out-of-scope
list, replace the requirements table with two bullets, fold Qiskit
Functions into the package requirement, and have improvements update
the existing tutorial instead of replacing it. Regroup approved
packages by function, and state that Foundational tutorials show how
to use a method or tool.
Open Foundational and Applied contributions in every domain. Give each
domain a foundational problem class with a "leads to" column and its
existing tutorials, define the Hamiltonian simulation one as
ground-state energy of N2, the Heisenberg chain, or the Ising chain,
and move SQD into it. Make the QML and QIS topics suggestions, and
describe Applied QIS tutorials as specialized techniques at scale.
Add adding-tutorials.md, alongside adding-courses.md, with the detailed
requirements, the review process, and the steps to add a notebook. It
references tutorial-template.ipynb and tutorial-guidelines.ipynb, which
a follow-up adds. Shorten the Contribute a tutorial page to the
high-level requirements, link to the guide, and replace the authorship
section with what contributors get.
Give each criterion a pass and fail test so reviewers can approve, ask for changes, or decline consistently, and add the pull request checks.
Call the page section Authorship and leave the 30-day response rule to the guide. In the guide, drop the note about saving hardware outputs and the CI test group detail.
Split Hamiltonian simulation foundational classes into molecular
electronic structure, nuclear structure, and spin chains, moving the
ground-state classes out of Applied. Move the classical-data QML
classes to Foundational. Replace target quantities with descriptions,
and add tutorial-problem-classes.md to define each Hamiltonian
simulation and QML class. Add review criteria and a proposal type for
improving an existing tutorial.
F2 now asks for a Next steps section that points to where the method leads, with a fallback for classes that have no Applied target yet. Drop the rule that tutorials built around a vendor's Qiskit Function are always Applied.

This branch was successfully deployed

1 active deployment
pr_preview — 94f5b5c0 Deployed Oct 20, 2026 by github-actions[bot]
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Projects

Status: No status

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

2 participants