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Create a repo

In this article

To put your project up on GitHub, you'll need to create a repository for it to live in.

Create a repository

You can store a variety of projects in GitHub repositories, including open source projects. With open source projects, you can share code to make better, more reliable software. You can use repositories to collaborate with others and track your work. For more information, see "About repositories."

Note: You can create public repositories for an open source project. When creating your public repository, make sure to include a license file that determines how you want your project to be shared with others. For more information on open source, specifically how to create and grow an open source project, we've created Open Source Guides that will help you foster a healthy open source community by recommending best practices for creating and maintaining repositories for your open source project. You can also take a free GitHub Learning Lab course on maintaining open source communities.

  1. In the upper-right corner of any page, use the drop-down menu, and select New repository. Drop-down with option to create a new repository
  2. Type a short, memorable name for your repository. For example, "hello-world". Field for entering a repository name
  3. Optionally, add a description of your repository. For example, "My first repository on GitHub." Field for entering a repository description
  4. Choose a repository visibility. For more information, see "About repositories." Radio buttons to select repository visibility
  5. Select Initialize this repository with a README. Initialize this repository with a README checkbox
  6. Click Create repository. Button to create repository

Congratulations! You've successfully created your first repository, and initialized it with a README file.

To learn more about GitHub CLI, see "About GitHub CLI."

  1. In the command line, navigate to the directory where you would like to create a local clone of your new project.
  2. To create a repository for your project, use the gh repo create subcommand. When prompted, select Create a new repository on GitHub from scratch and enter the name of your new project. If you want your project to belong to an organization instead of to your user account, specify the organization name and project name with organization-name/project-name.
  3. Follow the interactive prompts. To clone the repository locally, confirm yes when asked if you would like to clone the remote project directory.
  4. Alternatively, to skip the prompts supply the repository name and a visibility flag (--public, --private, or --internal). For example, gh repo create project-name --public. To clone the repository locally, pass the --clone flag. For more information about possible arguments, see the GitHub CLI manual.

Commit your first change

A commit is like a snapshot of all the files in your project at a particular point in time.

When you created your new repository, you initialized it with a README file. README files are a great place to describe your project in more detail, or add some documentation such as how to install or use your project. The contents of your README file are automatically shown on the front page of your repository.

Let's commit a change to the README file.

  1. In your repository's list of files, click README.md. README file in file list
  2. Above the file's content, click .
  3. On the Edit file tab, type some information about yourself. New content in file
  4. Above the new content, click Preview changes. File preview button
  5. Review the changes you made to the file. You'll see the new content in green. File preview view
  6. At the bottom of the page, type a short, meaningful commit message that describes the change you made to the file. You can attribute the commit to more than one author in the commit message. For more information, see "Creating a commit with multiple co-authors." Commit message for your change
  7. Below the commit message fields, decide whether to add your commit to the current branch or to a new branch. If your current branch is the default branch, you should choose to create a new branch for your commit and then create a pull request. For more information, see "Creating a new pull request." Commit branch options
  8. Click Propose file change. Propose file change button

Now that you have created a project, you can start committing changes.

README files are a great place to describe your project in more detail, or add some documentation such as how to install or use your project. The contents of your README file are automatically shown on the front page of your repository. Follow these steps to add a README file.

  1. In the command line, navigate to the root directory of your new project. (This directory was created when you ran the gh repo create command.)

  2. Create a README file with some information about the project.

    echo "info about this project" >> README.md

  3. Enter git status. You will see that you have an untracked README.md file.

    $ git status

Untracked files:
  (use "git add ..." to include in what will be committed)
  README.md

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

  4. Stage and commit the file.

    git add README.md && git commit -m "Add README"

  5. Push the changes to your branch.

    git push --set-upstream origin HEAD

Celebrate

Congratulations! You have now created a repository, including a README file, and created your first commit on GitHub.com.

You can now clone a GitHub repository to create a local copy on your computer. From your local repository you can commit, and create a pull request to update the changes in the upstream repository. For more information, see "Cloning a repository" and "Set up Git."

You can find interesting projects and repositories on GitHub and make changes to them by creating a fork of the repository. For more information see, "Fork a repository."

Each repository in GitHub is owned by a person or an organization. You can interact with the people, repositories, and organizations by connecting and following them on GitHub. For more information see "Be social."

GitHub has a great support community where you can ask for help and talk to people from around the world. Join the conversation on GitHub Support Community.