README generator
Fill in the form and watch a complete, professionally structured README.md build itself in the live preview — badges, features, installation, usage, contributing guidelines, and license. Download the file, copy the markdown, or publish it as a shareable link.
my-project
One sentence that sells the project.
A longer paragraph explaining what the project does, who it is for, and why it exists. Two to four sentences is plenty.
Features
- Fast — no configuration needed
- Small — zero dependencies
- Typed — ships with TypeScript definitions
Installation
npm install my-project
Usage
import { thing } from 'my-project';
thing.run();
Contributing
Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change, and make sure tests pass before opening a pull request.
License
What makes a good README
A README has one job: get a stranger from "what is this?" to "it's running on my machine" with as little friction as possible. The structure this generator produces is the one that has converged across successful open-source projects:
- Name and tagline first — a reader decides in seconds whether the project is relevant. The tagline (rendered as a blockquote) answers "what does it do?" before anything else.
- Badges as signals — license, npm version, and download counts are trust signals that take one line. More than four or five becomes noise.
- Features as bullets, not prose — scannable claims about what the project does well. Three to six is the sweet spot.
- Copy-pasteable install and usage — the two sections people actually read. A working code snippet beats paragraphs of description.
- License at the bottom — companies check it before adopting anything; missing licenses block adoption silently.
About the badges
Badges are generated from shields.io, the de-facto standard badge service. The license badge is static; the npm version, download, and GitHub star badges are live — they update automatically as your package gets releases and your repo gets stars, with no maintenance on your side. Fill in the GitHub repo (as owner/name) and npm package fields and the relevant badges appear; leave them empty and they're skipped.
FAQ
Is anything uploaded while I type?
No — the README is assembled in your browser. The only network request happens if you explicitly click Share as link, which publishes the markdown to a URL (with an edit token, expiring in 30 days) so you can send a draft to a teammate before committing it.
Can I edit the result afterwards?
Absolutely — the output is plain markdown, meant as a strong starting point. Download it, drop it in your repo, and extend it with project-specific sections (architecture, benchmarks, screenshots) as the project grows.
Which license should I pick?
Not legal advice, but as a rough map of common practice: MIT is the most common choice for libraries (short and permissive), Apache-2.0 adds an explicit patent grant, and GPL-3.0 requires derivative works to stay open source. See choosealicense.com for a fuller comparison.
Does this work for non-code projects?
Yes — skip the npm field, put whatever setup steps you have in the install box, and the structure works for datasets, courses, design systems, or documentation repos just as well.
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