The page you already own and left blank

A public repository is a page about your project on a domain search engines trust deeply. Most of them carry no description, no website link, no topics, and a readme that says how to install dependencies.

Run the free check

A public GitHub repository is an indexed page on a highly trusted domain, and it offers three fields most builders leave empty: the description, the website link, and the topics. Filling those in takes five minutes. A readme written for somebody discovering the project, rather than for somebody already cloning it, is the larger opportunity.

What you already have

If any part of your project is public, you have a page describing it on a domain with enormous accumulated trust, which is exactly the kind of third-party surface a new domain otherwise has to earn slowly.

That page has a description field, a website field, a topics field, and a readme that renders as the body of the page. On most repositories belonging to solo builders, the first three are empty and the fourth explains how to run the development server.

Five minutes fixes the first three. The readme is worth an hour.

The three fields

The repository description is a single line that appears in search results on the platform, in listings, and wherever the repository is referenced. Write it as what the project does for a person, in plain words, rather than as a technical summary of the stack.

The website field is a direct link to your product, and it is the one most often left empty. Fill it in with your custom domain, not a platform subdomain, and check it after any domain move.

Topics are the tags that place the repository in browsable lists. Choose the ones people would actually browse rather than every technology you used. A repository tagged with fifteen technologies is in fifteen lists where nobody is looking for a product, and a repository tagged with the two or three that describe what it is for is in the lists that matter.

A readme for somebody who just arrived

Most readmes are written for a developer who has already decided to use the project and needs to install it. That is a reasonable document and it is the second thing a reader needs, not the first.

Somebody arriving from a search or a link needs, in this order: what this is, who it is for, what problem it solves, what it looks like, and only then how to run it.

Open with a sentence that would make sense to somebody who has never heard of the project, and put a screenshot or a short demonstration near the top, because a picture of the thing working answers more questions than three paragraphs.

Then keep the installation instructions, which are genuinely useful, further down where they belong.

The curated lists

For many categories there are curated lists of tools and projects, maintained openly and often very heavily linked and read.

Getting into a relevant one is a submission through the normal contribution process, which means reading the contribution guidelines, adding your entry in the right section, matching the existing formatting exactly, and opening a pull request.

The rules are usually strict about quality and about where entries belong, and submissions that ignore the formatting are closed without much discussion. Following them carefully is most of the work.

Be honest about whether your project belongs. A list of well-maintained libraries is not the place for a two-week-old product, and submitting anyway wastes a maintainer's time and produces nothing.

If your code is private

Most vibe-coded products are closed, and this section still applies to you in a reduced form.

You can create a public repository that is not your source code: documentation, examples, a client library, templates, or the small utility you wrote along the way and would not mind sharing. Each of these is a legitimate public page about your project.

The genuinely useful version is to extract something small that stands alone. If, while building your product, you solved a specific problem in a reusable way, publishing that piece by itself gives you a public artefact that developers may actually use, and it links back to the product it came from.

This is not a trick, and it only works when the extracted piece is genuinely useful on its own. A repository published purely as a marketing surface is obvious and does nothing.

What this is not

Worth being clear about the limits, because this channel is easy to overrate.

A repository will not carry a consumer product. If your users are not developers, they are not browsing repositories, and the value here is the trusted third-party page rather than the audience.

Stars are not users and chasing them is a distraction. A repository with many stars and no product usage is a popular page, and popularity of that kind converts poorly.

And a repository that is obviously abandoned is a negative signal. If you are not going to maintain the public artefact, it is better not to create it than to leave something dated and broken standing as a description of your work.

Part of a larger guide

This page is one part of Getting listed. The other parts:

Questions people ask

Does a GitHub repository help my product get found?
Yes, as an indexed page describing your project on a domain with enormous accumulated trust, which is the kind of third-party surface a new domain otherwise has to earn slowly. The value is the trusted page rather than the audience, unless your users are themselves developers.
What should a repository description say?
What the project does for a person, in plain words, rather than a technical summary of the stack. It appears in platform search results and wherever the repository is referenced, so it functions as a one-line third-party description of your product.
How should I write a readme for discovery?
For somebody who just arrived rather than somebody already installing it. Open with a sentence that makes sense to a stranger, then who it is for, what problem it solves, and a screenshot near the top. Keep installation instructions further down where they belong.
How many topics should I add?
Only the two or three that describe what the project is for. Tagging every technology you used places the repository in many lists where nobody is looking for a product, while the few accurate ones place it in the lists that matter.
What if my product's code is private?
Publish something that is not your source: documentation, examples, a client library, or a small utility you built along the way. The version that works is extracting something genuinely useful on its own, since a repository published purely as a marketing surface is obvious and achieves nothing.
Should I try to get stars?
No. Stars are not users, and a repository with many stars and no product usage is a popular page that converts poorly. An abandoned-looking repository is worse than none at all, so only create a public artefact you intend to maintain.

Make sure the link in your repository works

The free Get Found Check confirms your domain resolves, renders and is readable, which is what every link you place elsewhere depends on.

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