Release 0.4 was about doing work I could be proud of, over multiple weeks. I chose to continue contributing to hiero-sdk-python because it aligns with my career goals (Python SDK development, developer experience, and reliable tooling), and because the repo has clear contribution standards and active maintainers. By the end of this release, I delivered two pull requests that together reflect both sides of real SDK work: improving a user-facing example and extending a core API with tests.

•PR #1044: Fix token association verification in the token airdrop example. This PR fixes a subtle but important developer experience problem: the example previously displayed token balances after association, which can be misleading because balances can remain 0 even when association is correct. The PR refactors the example output to verify association properly by checking whether the token ID exists in the account’s token_balances map and printing a clear “Associated / NOT Associated” result. This is the kind of change that looks small but prevents confusion for new users who copy/paste examples to learn an SDK.

•PR #1051: Support PublicKey for batch_key in the Transaction class with Unit & integration tests. This PR extends the transaction batching API so batch_key can accept both PrivateKey and PublicKey. Previously, only PrivateKey was accepted, which forced developers to provide private key material even in workflows where only a public key should be required. To make the change safe and reviewable, the PR also adds unit tests & integration tests.

Both PRs were built with the project’s standards in mind: minimal unintended behavior change, changelog updates, signed commits, and CI checks. I achieved the “meaningful work” goal by choosing one contribution that improves developer understanding and another that improves SDK capability. I also stayed consistent with weekly progress and worked through review/automation feedback instead of treating PR creation as the finish line.

This release reinforced that “real” open source work is not just writing code — it’s writing code that fits a system: •Examples are part of the product. A misleading example can cost users hours and harm trust in the SDK. Fixing #815 taught me to treat examples like public APIs: they need to be correct and unambiguous.  •Small API changes can require broad thinking. Allowing PublicKey for batch_key sounds simple, but it touches typing, serialization paths, and testing expectations across transactions.  •Review feedback is where you level up. The most valuable part wasn’t writing the first version, it was iterating based on reviewer and also automation feedback to align with repo conventions.

Automated maintainership tools like WorkflowBot pointed out when the PR couldn’t be merged due to failing checks and provided direct links to contribution guides. Maintainer review helped me see beyond the immediate code change. For example, maintainers suggested expanding related example/tests around batch transactions, which is the type of ecosystem thinking I want to build in my future contributions. Even AI review comments were useful as a checklist for consistency, but I treated them as suggestions buy not authority and prioritized maintainer expectations and CI rules.

Release 0.4 gave me a realistic open-source development experience: choosing scope, shipping improvements, handling review cycles, and working with community standards. I’m leaving this term with stronger confidence in contributing to production grade Python projects, especially SDKs where correctness, developer trust, and maintainability matter.