Contributing to VISTA

Help make VISTA better — bug reports, features, documentation, and code.

Table of contents

1. Ways to Contribute
2. Development Setup
   1. Prerequisites
   2. Clone & Build
   3. Testing Your Changes
   4. Quick Compile Check
3. Code Structure
4. Contribution Guidelines
   1. Code Standards
   2. Adding a New Template
   3. Adding New Payloads
   4. Submitting Changes
5. Reporting Issues
   1. Bug Reports
   2. Feature Requests
6. Community
7. License

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Ways to Contribute

Type	Description	Difficulty
🐛 Bug Reports	Report issues you find	Easy
💡 Feature Requests	Suggest new capabilities	Easy
📝 Documentation	Improve docs, fix typos	Easy
🎯 Payload Contributions	Add new payloads	Medium
📝 Template Contributions	Create expert templates	Medium
🔧 Code Contributions	Fix bugs, add features	Advanced

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Development Setup

Prerequisites

• Java 17+ — Download OpenJDK
• Maven 3.6+ — Download Maven
• Burp Suite — Download Burp
• Git — Download Git

Clone & Build

# Fork the repository on GitHub first, then:
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/VISTA.git
cd VISTA

# Build
mvn clean package -DskipTests

# Output JAR: target/vista-2.10.24.jar

Testing Your Changes

1. Build the JAR: mvn clean package -DskipTests
2. Open Burp Suite
3. Go to Extensions → Add → Java → select target/vista-2.10.24.jar
4. Test your changes in VISTA

Quick Compile Check

# Verify code compiles without full packaging
mvn compile -q

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Code Structure

See Architecture Overview for the full project structure.

Key directories:

Directory	Contents
src/main/java/burp/	Extension entry point
src/main/java/com/vista/security/core/	Core business logic
src/main/java/com/vista/security/model/	Data models
src/main/java/com/vista/security/service/	AI provider integrations
src/main/java/com/vista/security/ui/	Swing UI components
docs/	GitHub Pages documentation

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Contribution Guidelines

Code Standards

• Java 17+ features are welcome (records, text blocks, sealed classes)
• No external dependencies — VISTA must remain zero-dependency
• Thread safety — Use synchronized collections for shared state
• Follow existing patterns — Match the code style of surrounding code

Adding a New Template

1. Open src/main/java/com/vista/security/core/PromptTemplateManager.java
2. Add a new creator method following the existing pattern:

private PromptTemplate createMyNewExpert() {
    PromptTemplate template = new PromptTemplate(
        "My Vulnerability (Expert)",
        "Exploitation",
        "@vista",
        "Description of what this template covers",
        """
        System prompt with expertise, methodology, techniques...
        """,
        """
        User prompt with ...
        """,
        TemplateMode.EXPERT
    );
    template.addTag("tag1");
    template.addTag("expert");
    template.addTag("bug-bounty");
    return template;
}

1. Register it in loadBuiltInTemplates():

PromptTemplate myTemplate = createMyNewExpert();
markAsBuiltIn(myTemplate);
templates.add(myTemplate);

Adding New Payloads

1. Open src/main/java/com/vista/security/core/PayloadLibraryManager.java
2. Add payloads to the appropriate built-in library
3. Follow the existing payload format with description and tags

Submitting Changes

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a branch for your changes: git checkout -b feature/my-improvement
3. Make your changes and verify they compile: mvn compile -q
4. Commit with a clear message: git commit -m "Add CORS misconfiguration expert template"
5. Push to your fork: git push origin feature/my-improvement
6. Open a Pull Request on GitHub

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Reporting Issues

Bug Reports

Open an issue with:

1. VISTA version (check status bar)
2. Burp Suite version
3. Java version (java -version)
4. Steps to reproduce
5. Expected vs actual behavior
6. Error logs (if any, from Burp Extensions → Errors tab)

Feature Requests

Open a discussion with:

1. What you want VISTA to do
2. Why it would be useful
3. How you envision it working

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Community

• 💬 GitHub Discussions — Questions, ideas, show & tell
• 🐛 GitHub Issues — Bug reports
• 📧 @Adw0rm-sec — Maintainer

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License

VISTA is released under the MIT License. By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the same license.