scaffold

A meta/template repository with a sensible baseline for personal projects — licensing, governance, documentation, and contribution workflow. It is deliberately not language-specific: it contains the parts that every project needs regardless of stack.

What this repo is

This repository is a starting point for new personal projects, both public and private. It collects the boilerplate that is easy to get wrong or to postpone forever:

• License texts and a guide for choosing between them
• Community and governance files (CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, SECURITY.md)
• A changelog skeleton following Keep a Changelog and Semantic Versioning
• Documentation on branching strategies, commit conventions, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
• GitHub-specific configuration (issue and PR templates, CODEOWNERS, Dependabot)
• Cross-language editor, line-ending, and ignore rules (.editorconfig, .gitattributes, .gitignore)
• A checklist for the GitHub settings that files can't carry (docs/REPO-SETTINGS.md)

[TO BE FILLED IN: anything else this template grows to include]

How to use it as a template

1. Click Use this template on GitHub (or clone and re-init: git clone, delete .git, git init).
2. Search for the placeholders and replace them:
   • <PROJECT_NAME> — the name of your new project
   • <OWNER_HANDLE> — your GitHub username
   • <SECURITY_CONTACT_EMAIL> — the address for vulnerability reports
   • <CONTACT_EMAIL> — the code of conduct enforcement contact
   • <YEAR> / <COPYRIGHT_HOLDER> — in the chosen license file
   • [TO BE FILLED IN] — free-form sections that need project-specific content
3. Pick a license: read docs/LICENSE-GUIDE.md, copy the right file from licenses/ to the repository root as LICENSE, and delete the licenses/ directory.
4. Rewrite this README.md for the actual project, starting from docs/README-TEMPLATE.md.
5. Configure the repository settings following docs/REPO-SETTINGS.md.
6. Delete what you don't need (see the notes below on optional files).
7. Reset CHANGELOG.md to a fresh Unreleased section.

Optional files

• CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md — included because it is useful the moment a public project receives external contributors, but it is optional: feel free to remove it for private or strictly personal repositories.
• .github/CODEOWNERS — optional for single-maintainer projects; see the comments inside the file.
• docs/adr/ — keep it only if you intend to record architecture decisions.

What it does NOT include (and why)

• Language-specific tooling (linters, formatters, build files, package manifests): every stack has its own conventions and generators; duplicating them here would only go stale.
• CI/CD workflows: pipelines depend heavily on the language, hosting, and deployment target. Add them per project.
• A LICENSE file at the root: choosing a license is a per-project decision. The licenses/ directory provides the candidates and docs/LICENSE-GUIDE.md explains how to choose.
• Issue tracker automation, bots, org policies: this template targets personal projects maintained by one person or a small team, not an organization.

Structure

/
├── README.md                       # this file — replace with the project's own README
├── AGENTS.md                       # AI agent instructions (single source of truth)
├── CLAUDE.md                       # pointer to AGENTS.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md                 # contribution workflow
├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md              # Contributor Covenant (optional for private repos)
├── SECURITY.md                     # how to report vulnerabilities
├── CHANGELOG.md                    # Keep a Changelog + SemVer skeleton
├── .editorconfig                   # cross-language editor rules
├── .gitattributes                  # line-ending normalization and binary handling
├── .gitignore                      # OS, IDE, and secrets ignores (not language-specific)
├── licenses/                       # license candidates — pick one, move to ./LICENSE
│   ├── MIT.txt
│   ├── APACHE-2.0.txt
│   └── PROPRIETARY.txt
├── docs/
│   ├── LICENSE-GUIDE.md            # how to choose a license
│   ├── README-TEMPLATE.md          # README skeleton for new projects
│   ├── REPO-SETTINGS.md            # GitHub settings checklist per repository
│   ├── BRANCHING-STRATEGY.md       # trunk-based/GitHub Flow vs release-based
│   ├── COMMIT-CONVENTION.md        # Conventional Commits, with examples
│   ├── AI-AGENTS.md                # guidelines for CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md and agent setup
│   └── adr/
│       ├── README.md               # what ADRs are and how to use them
│       ├── 0000-template.md        # ADR template
│       └── 0001-trunk-based-development.md  # this repo's own branching decision
└── .github/
    ├── CODEOWNERS                  # optional for single-maintainer projects
    ├── PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
    ├── ISSUE_TEMPLATE/
    │   ├── bug_report.md
    │   ├── feature_request.md
    │   └── config.yml
    └── dependabot.yml              # base config, adapt per ecosystem