Core Contributor News for Sprint: Oct 10th - Oct 23rd, 2026
This sprint brought mostly positive experiences. 67% of participants rated their experience as good or great, while 33% reported a neutral experience or faced some challenges.
What are we celebrating?
Merged this sprint, mostly proctoring, search, and import reliability:
- Reset proctored exam attempts reliably when the provider is unavailable
- Don’t verify an attempt the learner never submitted
- Return a detailed error from the proctoring provider
- Bound the synchronous Meilisearch wait when indexing library blocks
- Give each course import its own working directory
- Show a toast when a grade import fails
Who needs help?
We opened a Fast Track proposal and two related PRs to make the embargo system more useful:
- Proposal: enforce GlobalRestrictedCountry on course access, not just registration
- back-end PR: fix: enforce GlobalRestrictedCountry on course access, not just registration - #39079
- MFE PR: feat: redirect to the embargo blocked-message page on error_code ‘embargo’ - #2055
Still triaging problems with Meilisearch:
- Bound how long content/search waits on Meilisearch document writes
- Bound retries and time limits on content/search Celery tasks
And we’re still looking for feedback on this proposal for making JWTs in open edX extensible – should I try to get on the agenda for a Product WG meeting?
I need committer review on the XBlock PDF conversion backend work.
What Pull Requests (PRs) need review?
As a CC, check for PRs that are stuck and need attention. Don’t have write access? No problem! You can still help by reviewing to move things forward. Ping Axim if there are issues merging after you review.
Below is a list of stalled PRs that need urgent attention. These are just some of the many PRs that require immediate review and action. In addition, there are several Draft PRs that need attention to move forward. Please take a moment to review and update them as needed so they don’t remain blocked. Thank you!
Stuck waiting for review
- feat: allow hiding question count on the course outline page
- perf(user_api): implement centralized caching for user preferences
- perf(grades): optimize database queries for large-scale grade recalcu…
- feat!: rm user db_constraint in CourseEnrollment
- perf: speed up the CCX grade report and fix its CSV output
- feat: support added to export content libraries to git (#38026)
- perf: bulk-prefetch grades in ProblemGradeReport and bound its per-learner caches
- fix: don’t scroll the page when toggling anchor-driven widgets
- fix: skip blocks with uninstalled XBlock types in item bank collect
- feat: higher course list API rate for staff client-credentials callers
Draft PRs: Require review and updates to move forward:
- feat!: remove support for local CodeJail
- feat: Requesting to add Course Passing Grade in the Admin Portal Learner Progress Report
- fix: include user-defined tokens as app token source
- fix: update secondary text color tokens
- chore: pin GitHub Actions workflows to full commit SHAs
- refactor: slash-and-burn Poll BuiltIn XBlock
- refactor: slash-and-burn Annotatable BuiltIn XBlock
- refactor: remove built-in LTI XBlock implementation (slash-n-burn #37819)
- refactor: remove built-in HTML XBlock implementation (slash-n-burn #37819)
- refactor: remove built-in Discussion XBlock implementation (slash-n-burn #37819)
Find a full list of PRs ready for review here, or focus on edx-platform PRs that need attention.
What are the Working Groups up to?
| Working Group | Latest Updates |
|---|---|
| BizDev | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2026-04-02 Partnership development Meeting |
| Build-Test-Release (BTR) | The BTR meeting focused on the Willow release schedule, testing readiness, and E2E test coverage. The team reviewed 77 open test failure reports (48 unassigned) and 56 open E2E findings, all lacking assignment, status, and priority. Release cadence discussions may remain on hold until automated testing provides sufficient Willow coverage. Latest meeting notes → 2026-09-21 BTR Meeting Minutes |
| Governance WG | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → July 7 to Sep 21, 2026 — Open edX Governance WG |
| Core Product | The Product WG reviewed the Profile Avatar Modernization and Advanced Settings proposals, focusing on using community voting and feedback to decide which ideas should move forward. Marco will test community voting before the proposals advance to the next stage. Last meeting notes → 2026-09-22 Core Product Meeting Notes |
| Data | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2026-09-16 Meeting notes |
| Deprecation | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → DEPR Meetings Notes (2026) |
| Documentation | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2026-02-04 Docs WG |
| Educators | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2026-04-27 Educators |
| Frontend | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2026-09-24 Frontend Working Group Meeting Notes |
| Large Instances | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → Large Instances Meeting Notes 2026-09-02 |
| Maintenance | The meeting focused on improving maintenance of openedx-platform. The current on-call rotation has been unreliable due to missed handoffs and log updates. Kyle proposed replacing the rotation with a model where each maintainer takes ownership of 1–2 ongoing maintenance tasks, with responsibilities rebalanced as needed. Latest meeting notes → 2026-10-29 Meeting notes |
| Marketing | The AEO meeting covered preparations for OEB Global (December 2–4 in Berlin), including a confirmed presentation slot and an ordered booth. The team also discussed the AI extensions and tools meetup, updates to the LLM Optimization Tracker, Google’s nonprofit paid search campaign with Raccoon Gang, lead review through the marketing dashboard, and planning for the Open edX Conference 2027. Latest meeting notes → Agenda, Oct 21st, 2026 |
| Mobile | The Mobile Product and Development meetings focused on iOS bug fixes, Provider App progress, and preparations for a pilot with 2–3 medium-sized clients to evaluate real-world traffic. The team also discussed iOS compatibility improvements, moving meeting notes to Confluence, and refactoring color tokens and reusable components to improve design consistency across platforms. Latest meeting notes → 2026-10-15 - Mobile Dev Meeting , 2026-10-13 - Mobile Dev Meeting , 2026-10-09 - Mobile Product Meeting Notes |
| Technical Oversight Committee | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → TOC Meeting Notes - 2026-07-08 |
| Translation | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2026-03-18 Translation WG Meeting |
| Design | The Design Working Group explored an experimental agentic approach to mapping the downstream impact of a proposed change in Paragon related to improved support for header-only card usage. Sam Daitzman will share the results after completing further verification. Latest meeting notes → 2026-10-01 - Design Working Group Meeting |
What events are coming up?
- Join a working group meeting using the community calendar.
What are we working on?
- Our community is working on exciting projects! Visit our Open edX Roadmap and Release Planning Spreadsheet to find out what’s happening.
Want to participate in Core Contributor Governance?
- Participate to the work of the Contributor Coordination Working Group. The group works asynchronously using the working group tasks board, and we’d love your input there. You can review and comment on existing threads there, or post your own topic to discuss with the group by creating your own ticket on the board (“+ Add item” in “New topics and issues to discuss”).
Anything to add?
Share your thoughts in Slack (openedx.slack.com) or the comments below!Please read How To Get Help (click the link in the preview pane to the right) before asking a question, thanks, then delete this text!