Announcements, Outreach

Zulip's Google Summer of Code 2026

Apoorva Pendse • 6 min read

This summer, 11 contributors completed the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program with the Zulip development community. This was the 11th consecutive year that Zulip participated in GSoC; over 140 contributors have now completed one of our formal internship programs, primarily through Google Summer of Code and Outreachy.

“As I look back on my Google Summer of Code 2026 stint with Zulip, I realize how far I have come. I went from struggling to get my code through CI tests to confidently contributing to a large open-source project.” — Pritesh Shetty

Our welcoming community is fully committed to helping bring up the next generation of open-source contributors from a wide range of backgrounds. Supporting participants in programs like GSoC is just one way we carry out that mission. Our experienced contributors, including many internship program alumni, have dedicated thousands of hours to mentorship.

We have long been invested in making Zulip’s code uniquely readable, well tested, and easy to modify. Beyond that, we have written over 200K words of documentation on how to contribute to Zulip, with topics ranging from practical Git tips to essays on important architectural decisions.

This is why our 2026 GSoC participants were able to contribute major improvements to the Zulip product. Together, this year’s GSoC participants wrote 410 commits that have already been merged into Zulip!

“Working on a real product, having my code reviewed by experienced maintainers, and collaborating with contributors from around the world gave me a much better understanding of what software engineering looks like beyond coursework and personal projects.” — Aadyot Nandan S

It’s impossible to describe here all the great work that’s been done, but here are some highlights.

Web app features for all users

“An hour of discussion on CZO regularly saved me a week of rework.” — Sairam Bisoyi

Administrative features

Integrations

  • Adding a new Gong integration, and moving the Heroku integration to Heroku’s app webhooks, with notifications for builds and releases. (Sathwik Shetty)
  • A new Google Meet integration. (Ana Elbaile)
  • Work toward native video calls in Zulip, starting with a self-hostable LiveKit call provider. (in progress) (Ana Elbaile)

“Working on Zulip’s integrations gave me a new appreciation for the engineering behind connecting different tools and services into one cohesive experience. It was rewarding to contribute features that help teams bring more of their workflows into Zulip, and to see how small, focused improvements can make a product more useful to its users.” — Sathwik Shetty

Backend and API improvements

“The community is always there to help and I never felt hesitant to ask for help.” — Bedo Khaled

“In my proposal I wrote that the code review process was the thing I loved most about Zulip, and after a summer of it I would say the same.” — Dhruv Shetty

Mobile app

  • Supporting per-channel topic policies in the mobile app, including “general chat” channels, as well as the Android system photo picker and organizing the inbox by channel folders. (Ruhaan Sande)

“Making code contributions through Zulip’s workflow has proven to be the biggest learning experience of my software engineering journey so far. As a student, it has given me direct exposure to the real-world development process.” — Ruhaan Sande

Learning to work with AI tools

As we described in the Zulip 12.0 release post, AI tools have become part of how the Zulip core team works. This summer, we offered our GSoC participants access to Claude Code for their work on Zulip, and Aman Agrawal led a session walking through his workflow and sharing tips for using it effectively.

Using these tools well is a skill in its own right. Rather than aiming to produce work faster, we encouraged participants to aim for higher-quality work than they could have done without the tools in a similar amount of time. As with all contributions, their work was subject to Zulip’s AI use policy and the same rigorous review as any other change.

“I learned how to use AI efficiently, how to maximize its capabilities without losing ownership or code quality.” — Ana Elbaile

Parting thoughts

We’re truly proud of everything our GSoC 2026 participants have been able to accomplish, and are looking forward to their continuing contributions in the coming months and years!

“What started as an opportunity to contribute to open source has become one of the most important learning experiences of my college journey. Being able to return for a second GSoC with the same community made it even more special.” — Aman (whilstsomebody)

Acknowledgements

We are especially grateful to all the community members who stepped up to mentor GSoC participants this summer, and help the program run smoothly:

Abhigyan Khaund, Aditya Kumar Kasaudhan, Afeefuddin, Alex Vandiver, Alya Abbott, Aman Agrawal, Ben Prew, Chris Bobbe, Evy Kassirer, Gaurav Pandey, Greg Price, Hari Prashant Bhimaraju, Karl Stolley, Ken Clary, Kenneth Rodrigues, Kislay Udbhav Verma, Kumar Aniket, Lauryn Menard, Maneesh Shukla, Mateusz Mandera, Mounil Kamlesh Shah, Niloth P, Pieter Cardillo Kwok, Prakhar Pratyush, Pratik Chanda, Puneeth Chaganti, Rajesh Malviya, Rohitt Vashishtha, Ryan Rehman, Sahil Batra, Satyam Bansal, Sayam Samal, Sayed Mahmood Sayedi, Shubham Padia, Tim Abbott, Zixuan James Li

We are also incredibly grateful to Google for organizing and funding this unique mentoring program, which helps bring up the next generation of open-source contributors. It is an invaluable contribution to Zulip and hundreds of other participating open-source projects, as well as the open source community at large.