So, you’ve spent some time exploring Mantis and you’re ready to make your first contribution. MANTIS includes an integrated Discord bot designed to simplify onboarding by helping you identify suitable tasks, connect with mentors, and collaborate with others working on similar problems. This document outlines the step-by-step process, ensuring that your first contribution is successfully integrated into the broader Mantis workflow.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, verify the following:

• You have joined the Mantis Discord server.
• You have access to the #create-dm channel.
• You are able to view and open tasks on GitHub.

Start a Conversation with the Mantis Bot

1. In Discord, go to the #create-dm channel.
2. Use the create channel button to make a direct message with the Mantis Bot.
3. In your DM with the bot, type / and begin entering a command name. Or, select the command with the Mantis logo from the command list. An explanation of common commands is provided below.
4. Press Enter to run the command.
5. When the bot replies, always hover over the bot’s message and click “Reply”. This keeps the conversation threaded so the bot can understand your responses.

Once this is set up, you can choose how you want to get started: by task, by mentor, or by assignee.

/m4m - Find a Task

This is for finding a specific task and guidance on it.

In your DM with the bot, run the /m4m command. Once the bot sends its first message, reply with:

• Your general technical interests, and
• Any past experience or contributions that might be relevant.

The bot will return a list of matching tasks. Use the buttons in the bot’s message to load more tasks, or assign yourself to one. If the latter is chosen, the bot will ask for your username. After, paste the task link so the bot can associate you with that issue.

/m4m_mentor - Find a Mentor

This is for finding a mentor to guide your contributions to Mantis.

Run the /m4m_mentor command. Once the bot sends its first message, reply with:

• Specific teams you have interest in,
• Your general technical interests, and
• Any past experience or contributions that might be relevant.

You will receive information about how your skills relate to Mantis and specific mentors, along with their teams, expertise, and potential guidance they can provide.

Choose one of the suggested mentors or consult the shared Mentor Directory (Google Sheet) for additional options. Use the bot’s buttons to generate a pre-written outreach message to send to your selected mentor. At the end of this flow, you should have one concrete task and a candidate mentor.

/m4m_assignee - Find an Assignee

This is for if you already have a task and want someone to collaborate or take it.

Run the/m4m_assignee command in your DM with the bot. Reply to the bot’s first message with either:

• A short description of the task, or
• A GitHub link to the specific issue.

You will receive a list of oriental members, including their name, contact information, and reasons for choosing them.

Recommended usage:

• Team leads: Use /m4m_assigneeto find contributors interested in taking on backlog items.
• Contributors: Use it to find collaborators for larger or more complex tasks.

Verticals

Mantis organizes its use cases into a set of “verticals,” each representing a major domain where cognitive AI systems can be applied. New contributors are encouraged to browse the verticals overview to understand where their skills and interests may align. An overview of the verticals is provided below.

Vertical Document: https://tinyurl.com/MantisVerticals

Patents, Startups, Innovation

This vertical builds a comprehensive cartography of the innovation ecosystem by integrating patents, academic papers, and startup activity into a unified, multi-layered semantic map. Contributors develop ingestion pipelines for sources using agent-based automation to scrape, refresh, and structure metadata across various patent aspects. This allows for the analysis of trends, identification of white space, and exploration of cross-domain opportunities. The overall goal is to support a wide range of users, from researchers to founders and investors. Ultimately, it uncovers opportunities for novel combinations, commercialization pathways, and deep-tech innovation using underutilized IP and sector bottlenecks.

Mantis 4 Finance, Investment, Risk Management

This vertical is constructs a deep analytical framework for financial discovery and long-cycle risk evaluation. The core of the approach is the integration of diverse data, ranging from quantitative metrics and qualitative filings to news streams and behavioral signals. This is unified into a semantic landscape. Contributors develop automated pipelines to collect and structure information from a wide array of sources, including SEC filings, financial news, and non-traditional datasets. This structured foundation enables powerful capabilities, such as cross-company comparisons, detection of market discrepancies, and long-term tracking of investment fundamentals. The system supports investors and strategists by revealing hidden relationships, surfacing undervalued opportunities, and providing a more contextualized view of risk.

Mantis 4 Education, Training, Corporate Knowledge

This vertical constructs intelligent knowledge ecosystems from educational and organizational content. Pipelines ingest LMS data, course catalogs, resumes, and corporate documentations into concept graphs and skill trajectories. These structures enable learner-specific curricula, cross-institutional navigation, and skills-gap analysis. Through interactive interfaces and guided knowledge environments, the platform supports adaptive learning paths and collaborative discovery. The outcome is a measurable enhancement in learning impact and organizational intelligence. This transforms static documents into a living, navigable resource.

Mantis 4 Law, Government, Legal Cases

This vertical structures the world of law and policy. Contributors engineer semantic frameworks that turn sources (court records and statutes to bills and speeches) into a connected knowledge graph. Automating the extraction of legal holdings, citation networks, and legislative history enables powerful analysis. Users can cluster concepts, trace relationships, and identify patterns across jurisdictions and time. The result is a critical advantage for professionals who need to pinpoint statutory gaps, understand judicial behavior, forecast policy outcomes, and build arguments on a foundation of comprehensive, structured intelligence

Mantis 4 Teams, Coordination, Code (Mantis4Mantis)

This vertical engineers the collaborative fabric of the Mantis platform. Contributors architect the real-time environments and code-intelligence systems that allow multiple users to interact and innovate simultaneously. Work spans from building semantic code maps and organizational knowledge graphs to developing meeting-aware AI assistants. These systems are foundational, enabling synchronous brainstorming, streamlined onboarding, and seamless knowledge continuity. This enables Mantis to serve a unified workspace that amplifies collective intelligence.

Mantis 4 Engineering & Technology Design

This vertical constructs unified design intelligence from multidisciplinary engineering artifacts. Pipelines ingest and link HDL modules, electrical schematics, and CAD geometry into structured, navigable maps. The platform features embedded AI for error interpretation and fix generation, UI components that synchronize simulations with inspector panels, and diagram-first modeling that maintains parity between visual and code representations. This structured approach supports engineers in exploring, debugging, and optimizing complex systems, bridging the divide between hardware and software design.

Mantis 4 Real Estate, Regulations, Building

Mantis workflows are used to analyze various housing regulations and create automated compliance checks, planning assessments, and interpretations of regulatory documents for decision support.