Internship Guide | Outreachy Documentation

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Your project should be your primary focus during your internship. Unless contrary to any laws where you are located, you should dedicate 30 hours per week to your project for at least 12 weeks of the Outreachy internship's 13 week duration.
Outreachy understands that interns may be temporarily interrupted from working on their project. You may get sick or have to deal with extreme weather. You may have a power outage or internet outage. Your computer may break down. You may want to spend time with your family on during a holiday or vacation.
As stated above, we expect interns to work 30 hours a week for at least 12 weeks of the 13 week internship. Please let your mentor know if you are not working on the project for a short period of time.
Rarely, interns work less than full-time, or cannot work for all 12 weeks. In that case, interns will need to arrange an internship extension with their mentor. Mentors recommend interns for extensions at the initial, mid-point, and final feedback dates. Outreachy organizers will confirm the extension with interns and mentors via email.
Internships can be extended for up to five weeks. Internships cannot be extended for more than 5 weeks. We cannot allow an internship to be stopped and then later restarted.
When an internship is extended, the feedback dates and payment dates will be shifted by the amount of the internship extension.
As a general policy, Outreachy strongly discourages the use of generative AI tools. These tools should be only used after an explicit conversation with your mentor. Applicants who submit unedited AI-generated contributions that they cannot explain or correct will NOT be accepted for Outreachy internships. Outreachy interns who over-rely on having AI generate their contributions may have their internship terminated.
Each Outreachy mentor will set a policy on whether they allow applicants and interns to use generative AI in their project contributions.
Outreachy applicants should check the project description to understand the mentor's generative AI policy. If no description is provided, applicants should check with their mentor before submitting any AI generated project contributions.
Outreachy interns should talk with their mentor at the beginning of the internship to understand what parts of the project they can use generative AI with, if any.
Generative AI is well known for "AI hallucinations". Generative AI is well known to output incorrect facts or make up concepts.
When generative AI is used in programming, it can create buggy code and make up function or API calls that don't exist. AI generated code often looks correct at first glance. It can take Outreachy mentors a long time to identify the issues.
Many experienced Outreachy mentors have commented that AI generative code is both poor in quality and difficult to review. Mentors are also concerned that applicants may not understand the code that is being generated. Outreachy mentors fear that using generative AI can slow down or interfere with the learning process of applicants and interns.
At the same time, there may be use cases where generative AI is helpful. For example, some people may use generative AI to find information about a technical topic in project documentation. Non-native English speakers may use generative AI to polish their commit messages to sound more professional. Generative AI is also helpful in extracting data or numbers from text into tables or charts. However, even these use cases require very careful checking to ensure there are no mistakes or made-up information.
A few open source projects are experimenting with allowing or even encouraging code contributions using generative AI or other AI programming tools. Each Outreachy project will have a different policy about whether they will accept project contributions generated with AI.
Please check the internship project description to understand whether you can use generative AI in your project contributions. Please talk with your mentor to understand whether you can use generative AI, and how best to use it.
Regardless of project generative AI policy, Outreachy expects applicants and interns to use generative AI in a deliberate, documented, and precise manner. Using the tips below will ensure that applicants and interns respect Outreachy mentor's time and expertise.
Using generative AI respectfully:
Outreachy mentors should provide:
If your mentor is not meeting the above expectations, please contact the Outreachy organizers.
Outreachy mentors are focused on helping interns complete their project. Some mentors provide career advice or help connecting to the larger open source community, but it is not required for mentors to do so. Please see the career development section below.
Outreachy is working to improve the career development services we offer interns. We currently offer a very limited set of career development opportunities:
An Outreachy internship is not a guarantee that you will find a job with an Outreachy sponsor. Some applicants pick their internship because they want to network with open source contributors who work for a particular company. However, you may end up working with open source contributors who are volunteers or work for other companies. Outreachy interns should be open to networking and working with all open source contributors, regardless of who they work for.
Outreachy interns are paid $7,000 USD total for three months of work. The stipend is paid in two payments:
The stipend is paid after organizers receive successful feedback from the project mentor. Interns will be required to fill out tax forms (either a W8-BEN or a W-9) in order to be paid. If tax forms or payment routing information are turned in after the tax form deadline, the initial payment may be delayed.
Dec 2026 internships payment schedule:
Interns are required to publish at least three reports about their internship. See the blog FAQ for suggested blog post length.
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