Tessera: Quantum Circuit Transpiler

Contributing

Our Approach

Tessera is open source and we genuinely welcome community involvement, including bug reports, feature suggestions, and experimentation. That said, this project is actively maintained and iterated on by Utility Tech LLC, and we plan to keep it that way. We have our own roadmap and direction for where Tessera is going.

What that means in practice: you are absolutely welcome to open issues, fork the project, and submit pull requests. We read everything. But we want to be upfront that PRs are less likely to be merged here than on most open source projects, not because we don't value contributions, but because we're hands-on with this codebase and want to maintain consistency in how it evolves. If you have an idea or a fix, opening an issue first is usually the best path.

Reporting Bugs

If you find a bug, open an issue on GitHub. A good bug report includes:

  • What you expected to happen
  • What actually happened
  • A minimal reproducible example, such as a short circuit and transpile() call that demonstrates the issue
  • The backend and coupling map you were using
  • Your Python version and relevant package versions (qiskit, qiskit-ibm-runtime, tessera)

Suggesting Features

Feature suggestions are welcome as GitHub issues. We can't commit to acting on every suggestion but we do read them and they inform our roadmap planning. The most useful suggestions are specific. “The router should support X” is more actionable than “the router could be better.”

If your suggestion is something you've already implemented in a fork and it works well, mentioning that in the issue is helpful context.

Forking and Experimenting

You are free to fork or clone Tessera and modify it however you like within the terms of the license. The codebase is intentionally structured to make experimentation easy. passes are isolated, backends are registered in one place, and the pipeline is transparent. If you want to try a new routing algorithm, add a backend, or swap out an optimization pass, the architecture is designed to make that straightforward.

See Adding a Pass and Adding a Backend for guides on extending Tessera in your own fork.

Pull Requests

Pull requests are welcome but we want to be honest: we review them on our own timeline and acceptance is not guaranteed. We're more likely to consider a PR if:

  • It addresses a specific bug that has been confirmed in a GitHub issue
  • It is small and focused, with one thing done well
  • It includes tests that cover the change
  • It follows the existing code style and conventions

If you're planning to invest significant time in a contribution, open an issue first and start a conversation. That way you'll know whether it's something we're likely to want before you build it.

License

Tessera is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. You are free to use, modify, and distribute it for noncommercial purposes. Commercial use requires a separate agreement. See the LICENSE file in the repository for the full terms.