Scaffolding Repos

Repo setup

Install or refresh the four things every one of the owner's repos should carry: a generic .gitignore, an LF-normalizing .gitattributes, a CHANGELOG.md (Keep a Changelog + SemVer), and the ## Repo profile marker in the root CLAUDE.md.

Idempotent and non-destructive. If a file already exists, show a diff of what you would change and ask before writing. Never clobber an existing CHANGELOG.md or hand-tuned .gitignore; merge missing entries in instead.

LICENSE check. While in the repo, check for a LICENSE file. If there is none, flag it to the owner: these repos are public, and a public repo without a license is all-rights-reserved by default, which usually contradicts the intent. Do not pick or install a license yourself; the choice belongs to the owner.

1. Determine the profile

Decide two things, asking the owner if they are not already obvious:

• Lock: locked (protected main, feature branch + PR, owner merges and publishes) or free (commit straight to main).
• Docs language: en or fr.

2. Write .gitignore and .gitattributes

These two files live next to this skill, in templates/. Copy and rename:

• templates/gitignore -> .gitignore
• templates/gitattributes -> .gitattributes

The rules are identical in every language; only the comments differ. The template comments are English. For a fr repo, swap each comment line using this table:

| English comment | French comment | | --- | --- | | # Claude Code working files, local to the dev machine. | # Fichiers de travail Claude Code, internes au poste de développement. | | # Operating systems. | # Systèmes d'exploitation. | | # Editors and IDEs. | # Éditeurs et IDE. | | # Backups and temporary files. | # Sauvegardes et fichiers temporaires. | | # Normalize line endings to LF for every text file, any OS. | # Normalise les fins de ligne en LF pour tout fichier texte, quel que soit l'OS. | | # Binary assets: never touch these even if git guesses wrong. | # Fichiers binaires : git n'y touche jamais, même s'il se trompe. |

When .gitattributes lands in a repo that already has commits, the new rules do not rewrite the files already in the index on their own. Run git add --renormalize . afterwards and look at git status: if files were renormalized, commit them separately (chore: normalize line endings) so the line-ending noise never mixes with a real change.

3. Create CHANGELOG.md

If there is no CHANGELOG.md, create one from the boilerplate for the docs language, which lives next to this skill in templates/:

• templates/CHANGELOG.en.md -> CHANGELOG.md
• templates/CHANGELOG.fr.md -> CHANGELOG.md

The repo is mono-language: install only the one matching the docs language, never both. Then start tracking changes under [Unreleased] with the standard English change-type names (see the committing skill).

4. Append ecosystem entries

The generic .gitignore only covers the universal set (Claude files, OS, IDE, backups). Offer to append the entries the detected stack needs, for example:

• Node: node_modules/, dist/, build/, *.log, *.tsbuildinfo, coverage/, .env, .env.local
• Python: __pycache__/, *.pyc, .venv/, .pytest_cache/, dist/, *.egg-info/
• Rust: target/
• Always, if relevant: .env and any secret or local database files.

5. Write the Repo profile marker

Add or refresh this section in the root CLAUDE.md (create a minimal CLAUDE.md if none exists). CLAUDE.md is gitignored, so the marker stays local. The committing and releasing skills read the literal Lock: and Docs language: tokens.

## Repo profile (read by the github skills)

- Lock: locked   
- Docs language: en   

Set the two values to the profile from step 1.

Marker-only mode. When committing or releasing only need the profile recorded and the repo already has its other generic files, write just this section into the root CLAUDE.md directly; do not run the rest of this skill. Those skills do this inline, so the full scaffold is reserved for a repo that needs its generic files installed or refreshed.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: qiaeru
• Source: qiaeru/skills-github
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.