* Add rank polymorphism node audit classifying all 271 nodes
* Implement StaticType for Item<T>
* Generate Item and mapped List wire variants for nodes declaring an Item<T> primary input
* Migrate nine nodes to Item element-wise kernels, dissolving the blending trait boilerplate
* Document the Item kernel implementation and staging plan
* Route Item<Vector> through TaggedValue::TypeDefault
* Add executor integration tests covering the Item and List wire variants
* Collapse element-wise Item/List wire pairs to the List form for conversion insertion
* Migrate sixteen vector modifier nodes to Item element-wise kernels
* Migrate Sample Image, Extend Image to Bounds, and Dehaze to Item element-wise kernels
* Fix bevel_with_transform test to actually exercise the transform attribute
* Implement From<T> for Item<T>
* Register PromoteNode rank adapters wrapping bare values into Item wires
* Insert PromoteNode adapters for Item/List wire pair fields in the preprocessor
* Define a real promote node backing the PromoteNode registry identifiers
* Zip ranked Item connectors by frame slot in the mapped element-wise variant
* Register ItemToListNode singleton raise adapters
* Resolve Item wires against List connectors by inserting promotion adapters at construction
* Rank the Offset Points distance connector and prove mixed-rank resolution end-to-end
* Implement Clampable for Item and List wires with per-variant clamp bounds
* Rank the Round Corners radius connector, exercising hard bounds on a ranked wire
* Implement ApplyTransform for Item
* Add Item wire implementations to the Transform node, keeping rank-0 chains rank 0
* Detect element-wise nodes by lazy primary connectors declaring Output = Item
* Convert Transform to an Item kernel with ranked parameters, delivering the broadcast milestone
* Rename Apply Transform to Bake Transform, baking item transforms on Vector, DAffine2, and DVec2
* Promote bare wires onto Item connectors at resolution via WrapItemNode adapters
* Rank the numeric, vector, and boolean parameters across the migrated element-wise nodes
* Rank the enum, integer, and seed parameters, registering their rank adapters via a consolidated macro
* Amend the audit with the DashPattern value type resolution
* Migrate the string family to Item element-wise kernels
* Unwrap Item wires into bare legacy connectors at resolution via UnwrapItemNode adapters
* Shadow owned node parameters in bodies instead of mut in signatures
* Migrate the math family and string measure nodes to Item element-wise kernels
* Convert the comparison and clamp nodes to Item kernels, dropping unreachable &str rows
* Flat-map expander kernels returning List under the mapped variant's frame
* Migrate the expander nodes to Item kernels flat-mapping under the frame
* Remove the unused peel_list helper
* Rank the raster adjustment and blending kernels, recontextualizing shader nodes onto an Item stand-in
Migrate the 16 adjustment nodes, Mix, Color Overlay, and Gradient Map from whole-List kernels to rank-0 Item kernels, letting the macro derive the List-mapped (zip) variants. Move the Adjust and Blend per-element seams off List onto the element types (add the Raster<CPU> impls, drop the now-dead List impls).
Shader nodes keep their bodies verbatim: PerPixelAdjust re-emits the identical kernel against a transparent no_std Item stand-in, so every Item<T> connector and .element() call resolves to a zero-cost identity on the GPU while the uniform buffer stays bare repr(C). The macro peels Item off ranked uniform params, wraps the fetched texel and uniforms at the entry point, and unwraps the result. This drops the shader_node/Item incompatibility guard. Register rank adapters for the adjustment enums.
* Update the rank polymorphism roadmap for the landed shader-node and adjustments chunk
* Rename the GPU Item stand-in to ShaderItem, aliased as Item at its shader-node import sites
* Flip the vector shape generators to emit rank-0 Item<Vector>
The shape generators (Rectangle, Circle, Ellipse, Arc, Spiral, Polygon, Star, Arrow, Line, Grid, QR Code) each produced exactly one shape wrapped in a singleton List<Vector>. Emit Item<Vector> directly so they connect to the rank-0 content connector of the migrated Transform node. Downstream List consumers receive the value through the existing Item to List promotion.
Relax the element-wise validation so a `()` (generator) primary may return Item<T> without being element-wise. Adapt the Repeat on Points test, which still takes a List content connector, by raising the generator's Item output through a singleton wrapper node.
* Parse ranked Item<T> parameter defaults against the bare element type
A ranked `Item<T>` parameter's default value is a bare, unranked `T` (promoted to the wire at resolution), but the preprocessor was handed the wrapped `Item<T>` type and could not parse the literal, flooding the console with warnings and dropping the defaults. Key the field's default_type metadata off the peeled element type for concrete ranked parameters, leaving generic `Item<T>` primaries and skip_impl nodes untouched.
* Parse an element-wise primary's scalar default against the bare element type
An element-wise node's primary reports its default_type as the List wire form so an unconnected primary defaults to an empty list. But when the primary carries a scalar `#[default]` (such as Root's radicand), that literal must parse as a bare element, not a List. Key the primary's default_type off the bare element type when it has a Default value source, keeping the List form otherwise.
* Add the DashPattern value type for stroke dash sequences
Introduce a rank-0 DashPattern value type (a Vec<f64> of alternating dash and gap lengths) so a stroke's dash pattern is a single frameable value rather than a rank-1 List<f64>. Register it as an auto-generated TaggedValue variant, parse its default from a comma or space separated string, and register its rank adapters. Not yet wired into the Stroke node.
* Rank the Fill and Stroke nodes element-wise and give Stroke a DashPattern connector
Migrate Fill and Stroke to element-wise Item<V> primaries (over Vector and Graphic element types) via a new element-level VectorItemMut trait, so styling one shape yields one shape and rank is preserved instead of promoting the input to a singleton List and emitting a List. The macro derives the List-mapped variant for genuine collections.
Wire the Stroke dash sequence to the new rank-0 DashPattern value type, collapsing the old content x paint x dash cartesian and dropping the IntoF64Vec trait. Update the stroke properties dash widget, the drawing tool, and graph-operation plumbing to read and write DashPattern, and migrate legacy F64Array, F64, and String dash inputs on document open.
Assign Colors stays a whole-collection node: each element's gradient position depends on its index among all siblings, which the element frame does not expose, so it keeps its List primary and the VectorListIterMut trait.
* Register rank adapters for the ranked Stroke enum parameters
The element-wise Stroke node ranks its align, cap, and paint order parameters as Item<StrokeAlign>, Item<StrokeCap>, and Item<PaintOrder>, but those enums lacked promotion adapters, so a bare default enum value could not be promoted to its Item wire and no Stroke variant resolved ("No construct found for node"). Register their rank adapters alongside StrokeJoin.
* Display Item wires in the Data panel without a List's ID column
Add a TableItemLayout impl for Item<T> and recognize Item wire types when introspecting graph data. An Item holds a single element, so it renders as a one-row table of the element plus its attributes with no leading index column, and it labels as its element type T rather than a List's T[]. Add ItemAttributeValues::get_any for the attribute widget dispatch.
* Register MonitorNode for Item wire types so the Data panel introspects them directly
Graph introspection wraps the inspected output in a generic MonitorNode typed to the wire. Without Item<T> monitor registrations, an Item<Vector> output could only be monitored after an Item to List promotion, so the Data panel captured and displayed a List<Vector> despite the connector being Item<Vector>. Register monitors for the Item types the element-wise nodes emit, and add the matching Data panel downcast entries.
* Color and double Item/List wires and cleave layer-stack connectors in the node graph
* Route wire color and rank through hidden nodes and refresh them on type changes
* Rework the DashPattern connector conversions with element-wise promotion and an explicit reducer node
* Rank the remaining value, context, aggregation, and transform nodes onto Item<T> wires
* Back DashPattern with a List<f64> so the Data panel can introspect its lengths
* Carry a single Item<T> through varargs so the Read context nodes emit Item<T> not List<T>
* Relax rank validation for aggregation shapes, add element adapters, and match variants by fewest promotions
* Rank the remaining bare and unnecessarily-List connectors across the node catalog
* Add Graphic::None and the FillChoice paint value, making colors and gradients plain values
* Rename GradientStops to Gradient and the legacy Gradient/Fill structs to LegacyGradient/LegacyFill
* Restore generator frame-from-params ranking to the roadmap as a planned stage
* Rename the ranked-field adapter identifier from PromoteNode to FieldAdapterNode to reflect its full contract
* Unload only the wires whose displayed style changed when types update
* Peel wire rank in the editor's semantic type checks so rank-0 layers are recognized
* Restore the whole-List Transform variant so rank-1 content wires resolve again
* Register the Item wire forms for the Memoize and Context Modification infrastructure nodes
* Give every ranked connector a field adapter and add numeric cast variants for legacy wires
* Key a ranked param's type default off its Item wire form when no literal default exists
* Inherit the layer's content value when splicing a node into an empty chain
* Migrate stale List-form TypeDefault inputs to the definition's current default
* Generate the mapped wire variant only when the element-wise node has a frame source
* Let a bare wire feed a List connector via a wrap-raise adapter, costed as two rank steps
* Add a zip companion to the whole-List Transform so ranked List parameters pair per slot
* Add the Sum, Average, Minimum, Maximum, Any, and All list reducers
* Convert the measure family to element-wise Item kernels per the audit classification
* Prefer the bare element value over the Item type default so ranked params keep their widgets
* Rename GradientStopsUI to GradientUI
* Split Fill's optional transform into a _has_transform bool and a ranked _transform matrix
* Rename the migration-only OptionalDAffine2 TaggedValue to LegacyOptionalDAffine2
* Flow byte buffers as Item<Resource> instead of List<u8> across the byte nodes
* Macro-generate the list-content wire variant, retiring the hand-written Transform-zip, Area, and Centroid companions
* Let ()-primary generators take ranked params and frame over them via the mapped variant, ranking Circle's radius
* Rank the vector shape generators' params to Item, adding a rank-aware input grab to the introspection harness
* Rank the value, color, and text generator params to Item
* Rank the raster, web-request, and context-reader generator params to Item
* Fix the repeat and brush test wirings left behind by the param-ranking sweeps
* Delete the vestigial Some, Unwrap Option, and Size Of debug nodes
* Delete the Attach Attribute node, folding its role into Write Attribute
* Add the Filter and Sort list companion nodes
* Guard the removed-definition migration swap target with a test
* Add the Box Corners value type in place of the rectangle corner radius list
* Split Text to Vector's per-glyph mode into a Text to Vector Glyphs node
* Rank the Combine Channels node's channel connectors to Item
* Make Map Points an element-wise node
* Delete the deprecated Upload Texture node
* Update the implementation roadmap to reflect the landed stages
* Let monitor introspection read rank-0 wires, locking in the layer coercion promotion path
* Prefer the rank-0 default when disconnecting a rank-capable input
* Make Path Modify an element-wise node
* Wrap node paths in a NodeIdPath newtype so they flow as a single Item
* Give Item<Raster<CPU>> a default so an unconnected Brush background resolves
* Stop the Brush node from setting layer attributes its paint operation doesn't produce
* Present-gate Flatten Path's adopted layer path like its fill and stroke
* Gate carried layer attributes on static column presence, not runtime values
* Give the remaining graphic Item<T> types a default so unconnected primaries resolve
* Dispatch a ranked param's Properties widget from its rank-0 element type
* Make Extract Transform an element-wise node, restoring the Origins to Polyline body
* Rename Flatten Path to Combine Paths
* Stamp Legacy Layer Extend's adopted layer path as a readable NodeIdPath
* Drop the dead List<u8> and List<NodeId> wire rows
* Rank Flatten Graphic's Fully Flatten toggle to Item
* Update the implementation roadmap with the endgame scope
* Make Combine Paths a reducer that collapses the whole frame into one path
* Stop type-converter nodes from carrying the source's unrelated attributes
* Format the Origins to Polyline regression test
* Wrap the Brush node's trace in a BrushTrace newtype so it flows as one value
* Make Switch a framed element-wise select, bundling whole collections
* Widen and align element-type coverage across the list and graphic nodes
* Register the compiler's cache chain pair for every ranked enum and newtype wire
* Fix wire colors for Passthrough outputs, bundled lists, and bools, and widen list wires
* Represent List wire types structurally with Type::List, replacing name-parsed rank promotion
* Treat scope and data fields as environment, rank scope wires as Item, and feed the render boundary through a context vararg
* Delete the vestigial Clone debug node
* Reinstate Upload Texture as an element-wise node and fix the GPU variants' scope executor and rank adapters
* Rename Combine Paths back to Flatten Path, deferring that rename to its own PR
* Deduplicate the promotion adapter registrations into the field adapter macro
* Rank Write Attribute's value connector to Item<AttributeValueDyn>, retiring the UnwrapItem bridge
* Vertical wire styling
* Store the editor layer path attribute as a bare NodeIdPath, not an Item<NodeIdPath>
* Rank Context Modification's features connector to Item<ContextFeatures>, dropping the dead memoize row
* Rank Path Modify's modification parameter to Item<Box<VectorModification>>
* Rename the field adapter node family to input adapter
* Drop the dead bare scalar rows from Context Modification's implementations list
* Move the dynamic executor's test module into its own file
* Drop the registry's unreachable bare rows for Memoize, the cache chain, and ConvertNode
* Materialize stored TaggedValues as ranked Item wires at the source
* Remove the bare-wire promotion and adapter machinery made dead by ranked value materialization
* Plant the input adapter for List-only inputs, composing position conversion from standard rows
* Consolidate Into/Convert conversions into the input adapter umbrella and rename the rank adapter identifiers
* Fix grouped layers gaining a phantom None stack element from the FillChoice default hijacking every List<Graphic> disconnect
* Enforce ranked node inputs in the macro, rejecting bare wire declarations
* Remove the unit Context => () machinery rows, leaving () purely as the no-primary sentinel
* Add a --signatures rank-audit mode to node-docs for the ranked-wire migration
* Remove the node-docs --signatures rank-audit mode now that ranked wires are enforced
* Migrate legacy no-color values on the Black & White, Color Overlay, and Empty Image color inputs
* Rewrite the element-wise accessor wire type at the primary input, not raw index 0
* Register the cache chain for Resource wires, replacing the lone hand-written Monitor row
* Gate the remaining Raster<GPU> registry rows behind the gpu feature
* Let List<DVec2> wires erase to ListDyn for the attribute reader and element counter
* Rename Extract Element to Item at Index, Count Elements to List Length, and Omit Element to Remove at Index
* Store paint picks as plain color/gradient values, removing the FillChoice value type
* Code review restructuring
* Sort by the consumed sort_key attribute or natural element order, adding the Sort Key node
* Remove the new list-combinator and reducer nodes to defer them to a follow-up PR
* Parse Fill and Stroke color defaults through the paint wire's Graphic element
* Emit ranked implementation-row default types structurally so their element TypeIds survive to default-literal parsing
* Exempt the deliberate no-paint choice from the stale List-form TypeDefault migration
* Migrate the legacy 4-input Fill directly to the split has-transform shape
* Upgrade the demo artwork
* Fix the valid AI review findings: Item eq/hash contract, table-era no-paint migration, quantize List rows, and other smaller issues
* Remove the rank polymorphism working documents
* Hash Item attribute values directly instead of debug-formatting them, speeding up cached evaluation
* Replace the data panel's dead bare-wire downcast arms with full coverage of the ranked monitor row types
* Derive PartialEq for Item now that attributes participate in equality
* Extend the data panel's attribute dispatchers with the newly supported scalar and choice enum types
* Add List monitor rows for the framed numeric conversion outputs so inspecting them resolves, with matching data panel arms
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+++ title = "Submitting a contribution"
[extra] order = 3 # Page number after chapter intro +++
Collaboration is a key part of real-world software engineering. Graphite follows some basic procedures to keep the process smooth and efficient. You will want to familiarize yourself with these guidelines to save yourself and Graphite maintainers time and confusion.
This assumes you understand enough about how Git works to utilize commits, branches, and multiple remotes. If you're new to Git, you will need to learn those topics on your own, but a good starting point is this portion of the Graphite intro webcast which recommends installing the Git Graph extension for VS Code to visualize your Git history and branches.
AI usage
If you are using any form of AI tools in your development workflow, you must read and comply with our AI contribution policy before submitting your PR.
Git branch name
Before making your first commit, create a new branch with a name that describes what it's about. Aim for short but sufficiently descriptive. Kebab-case (using hyphens between words) is our usual convention. Don't include a prefix like feature/ or fix/ which just adds visual noise. An example like fix-path-tool-selection-history is fine, but almost too long.
Warning: do not open a PR from a branch named master. It makes code review considerably more difficult. Create a new branch if you've already been committing to master and open your PR from that correctly-named branch.
After you push your branch to GitHub then open a PR, you won't be able to change its branch name. But please don't close a PR and open a new one just because the branch name isn't optimal. Just keep these tips in mind for the next time.
Pull request
Once you have gotten your code far enough along that you are confident you'll be able to complete it, open a pull request (PR). You might also do this earlier if a maintainer requests to see your code in order to assist you.
Later on when you are building larger features, a PR should be opened once you have meaningful progress. That way, it can be kept safe on GitHub and other maintainers can check in to see your status so your work is less of a mystery.
Here's the important part: when you open a PR, it should be marked as a draft unless it is currently ready for review. The left image shows how to open a new PR as a draft, and the right image shows how to convert an existing PR to a draft.
You should mark it as ready for review and ping a maintainer when you believe your code implements the needed functionality and doesn't introduce any new bugs or broken features.
Title and description
Your PR title will become the commit message of your feature's commit in the project Git history. It should aim to concisely but descriptively summarize what your PR does. We use sentence case and imperative mood ("Fix X bug", "Add Y feature", "Make Z faster").
If you are working on a task from the #✅code-todo-list Discord channel, you should right-click the exact message, select "Copy Message Link", and paste that into your PR description.
If you are working on a task with a GitHub issue, please be certain to include that issue number in the description. GitHub requires the format "Closes #123", "Fixes #123", or "Resolves #123". If there are multiple issues, you have to fully repeat this trigger word for each one. If there is no issue, remove the pre-filled "Closes #" description text.
When the PR gets merged, any issue referenced by the trigger word will be automatically closed. That isn't desirable for tracking issues, so you should instead use "Part of #123" which isn't a trigger word. After the PR merges, please edit the description to change "Part of" to "Closes" so the tracking issue links to the PR without it having gotten closed.
As a bonus, it can be helpful for maintainers if you take a few minutes to write about what you changed and include relevant screenshots or video clips.
If you have concerns about a certain approach you took or if a certain part of your code is as clean as it could be, you can leave comments on lines of your own code from the "Files changed" tab after opening the PR.
Comment on the issue for assignment after it merges
For any issue referenced in your PR (including tracking issues), we need you to leave a comment on issue. It doesn't matter what you write. You can just say "I opened PR #456" or something to that effect. This is only necessary because we will need to assign that issue to you upon merging your PR, but GitHub only allows assignments to those who have commented.
That way you get credit for your work and we can keep our closed issues cleanly organized. For consistency, a closed issue should have an assignee if it was resolved by a PR. Otherwise, only duplicate or invalid issues should be closed without an assignee.
We don't commonly assign issues while a PR is still in progress, only upon landing the PR. That's because PRs often get abandoned and we don't want an assignment blocking someone else from picking up the work.
Code review etiquette
It is your responsibility to build the editor, thoroughly test your work, and employ common sense to avoid wasting a maintainer's time in needing to point out obvious flaws. It is not uncommon for inexperienced contributors to request review when their code entirely fails to implement the task at hand, or breaks surrounding functionality in a way that should have been immediately apparent. This doesn't leave a good impression and can frustrate maintainers. It may also be interpreted as AI-generated spam if the mistakes are egregious enough, which will lead to a ban according to our AI contribution policy.
If you don't actually understand what is intended with your feature/fix and why this is meaningful to a user of Graphite, spend time becoming that user and understanding the context. Learning at least the basics of using Graphite is important. Then ask questions in Discord if you're still confused about specific edge cases or the wording of the task.
It is also common for larger tasks to enter a round of review to confirm the direction is correct before you go back and polish the remaining details of the implementation. It's good to be in touch with the team to decide on when is the right time for this kind of preliminary review. It can save you effort reworking problems if you misunderstand the goals, or if the exact details of the requirements were never well-defined and you'll need to iterate on the design together with the team. Don't feel that every part of your PR needs to be 100% finished before requesting feedback, but also be clear so you aren't taking a maintainer away from other work to point out that you are obviously nowhere near done.
Self-review
Before marking your PR as ready for review, you should do a self-review. That means reading over the diff of all your changes to ensure they are correct, complete, and lacking frivolous changes like unintended whitespace alterations, leftover debugging code, or commented-out lines. Read over it with a fine-toothed comb so maintainers don't have to nitpick as much. It is only fair that your first code reviewer should be yourself, so you catch the obvious flaws first.
Feel free to leave comments on lines of your own code in the diff if you want to communicate concerns or highlight uncertainties to the maintainer. This is also where you must disclose AI generated lines of code if applicable.
Passing CI
Upon pushing a commit to your PR's branch, CI will need to build and test your code. PRs from forks will have to wait until a maintainer approves the CI run. If you're uncertain, run cargo test --all-features on your machine or ask a maintainer to trigger CI for you.
You also have to pass cargo fmt and cargo clippy in CI before your PR can be merged. You should run these commands locally before pushing to confirm.
Your goal is for the check called "Editor: Dev & CI / build (pull_request)" to pass with a ✅. If it fails with an ❌, you will need to investigate. If you need access to the build logs, ask a maintainer to provide them. Occasionally, other checks may fail, but you likely won't be responsible for fixing those and they can be ignored.
Keeping your work up-to-date
Be sure to start your work from the latest commit on the master branch by pulling (git pull) with master checked out when you begin coding.
As time goes on and master accumulates new commits, your branch will become outdated. It has to be synced up with master before your PR can be merged. Sometimes there will be conflicts that you need to resolve, which you can find learning resources for online. Enabling Git's three-way diff conflict style with git config --global merge.conflictstyle diff3 can make this process easier.
When your branch can be updated with master without conflicts, you can click the "Update branch" button below the CI status. If you click the dropdown button beside it, you can choose instead to update with a rebase. If this can be done without conflicts, this is preferred because it maintains a clean, linear history for your branch.
Be sure to pull the rebased, or updated-with-a-merge-commit, branch after you or a maintainer updates it (or pushes other commits to it) to ensure you are working on the latest code.
Please do not constantly rebase or merge every day while you're waiting for review since it's unhelpful and gets annoying. A reviewer will do that for you if there are no conflicts. But if there are conflicts, you will need to resolve them and push the updated code before review.
Review process
Assuming you have done what's explained above, a maintainer will aim to review your PR within a few days if possible. Feel free to send reminders because PRs can get overlooked.
As a rule of thumb, at this stage you are about 50% done with your work. The other 50% of your time will be spent responding to feedback and making (sometimes significant) changes.
There are two parts to the review process, QA and code review, which occur separately:
- Quality assurance (QA): A build of your code will be opened and tested to ensure it implements the requested functionality and doesn't introduce regressions. This is not a substitute for your own testing, but it is a necessary line of defense against overlooked issues. This is usually performed by Keavon, the founder and product designer, whose eye for detail keeps the app polished and consistent. Maintainers (and only maintainers) have the ability to invoke CI by commenting "!build" on your PR which will produce a build link. That is a unique link hosting a build of your PR's current code.
- Code review: The code will be checked for flawed approaches, pitfalls, confusing logic, style guide adherence, sufficient comments and tests, and general quality. A review may be left through GitHub or your PR may have commits added to it. Feel free to read the diffs of those commits to understand what was changed so you can learn from that feedback. Direct commits are often faster than leaving dozens of comments. These can range from nitpicks to larger improvements. Our process is to collaborate on PRs as a team to write the best code possible, meaning your PR won't always be exclusively written by you.
When changes are requested, the maintainer will usually mark the PR as a draft again while awaiting your updates. It is your responsibility to mark it as ready for review again once you have addressed the feedback.
- If a PR is a draft, the ball is in your court to move it forward.
- If it's marked as ready for review, it means there is nothing more for you to do until the maintainer has time to review it. (You're encouraged to work on other PRs while waiting.)
After any number of back-and-forth cycles, a maintainer (usually Keavon who often gives the final say) will merge your PR. All your commits will be squashed into a single new commit on the master branch. This keeps the Git history linear and easy to follow.
Congratulations on landing your successful contribution! Post a request in #📄development on Discord to be assigned the "Code Contributor" role.

