Submitting a Repo

Found a repo people should know about? It can be yours or somebody else's. Fill in one form, and if the repo clears the bar, it's on the list within minutes. Nobody has to approve it by hand.

Before you start

Two things save you a rejected submission:

• Check your account. It needs to be at least 30 days old, with a public repo or some contribution in the last year. Trust Checks has the detail.
• Check the repo. Run it past the Quality Bar. Checks worth looking at first: the 30-day age, the license and the "2 of 7 extras".

Submit it

1. Open the Submit a repo form.
2. Repository: paste the GitHub link, or type owner/name. Links to a branch or file (/tree/..., /blob/...) work too.
3. Category: pick the one that fits best. Each entry goes in exactly one. Unsure? See Categories.
4. Description: one plain sentence, 10 to 140 characters, saying what the repo does. The rules are below.
5. Tick both boxes, then select Submit new issue.

The bot answers on the issue, usually within a few minutes.

What happens next

Result	What you see
Accepted	The issue gets the accepted label and a comment. The bot opens a pull request that adds the repo to data/entries.json, and it merges on its own once the checks pass. The repo gets its own Discussion as soon as the pull request merges (within the hour at the latest), and Likes start counting.
Rejected	A comment lists every reason, and the issue closes with the rejected label. Fix what it says, then open a new submission. Editing the old issue doesn't run the checks again.
Something broke on my side	A comment says so, and I'm pinged. You don't need to do anything.

If GitHub drops the run, a sweeper picks the submission up again, usually within half an hour.

Writing the description

The description is the line people read under the repo name, so the rules keep it readable and keep spam out. The bot tidies it first: extra spaces go, and any run of !, ?, ,, ;, : or . at the end becomes a single full stop, or a single question mark if there was a ? in it.

Rule	Example that fails
10 to 140 characters, after tidying	Fast CLI.
No links, web addresses or IP addresses	See example.com for docs
No @ mentions	Built by @someone
None of these characters: < > [ ] ( ) * _ #, or a backtick	A **fast** git client
No more than 2 emoji in a row	Fast 🚀🚀🚀
No words longer than 5 letters in ALL CAPS	The FASTEST git client
One alphabet per word, so no Latin letters mixed with Cyrillic or Greek	A word that swaps a Latin "a" for a Cyrillic one
No wording from the spam blocklist (SEO, casino, scam and similar)

An emoji built from several joined together, like a family, counts as one. Product names such as Node.js and Vue.js are fine. Short ALL CAPS words such as CLI, HTTP or JSON are fine too.

If your description fails, the bot tries the repo's own GitHub description through the same rules. When that one passes, it's used instead. When both fail, the submission is rejected with the reason your description failed.

Limits

3 submissions a week. The bot counts the submissions you've opened in the last 7 days, and rejected ones count. That's why it pays to check the Quality Bar first. Hit the limit and the bot tells you to try again in a few days.

No duplicates. If the repo is already listed, the submission is turned down. The bot follows GitHub renames and transfers, so an old name finds the current entry. If the repo is in the archive, it says so: archived entries come back on their own once the repo is active again, so there's no need to submit it twice. See Removal Policy.

Please don't edit data/entries.json in a pull request. The bot owns that file and only adds what comes through the form.

Related

• Quality Bar: every repo check, with fixes.
• Trust Checks: who can submit.
• Likes and Ranking: what happens once you're listed.