CONTRIBUTING.md Generator

What Is the CONTRIBUTING.md Generator?

It creates a CONTRIBUTING.md guide that explains how to set up your project, make a change, write commit messages and open a pull request. GitHub links to this file when someone opens an issue or pull request, so it is the first thing new contributors see.

When to Use It

• Opening a project to outside contributors for the first time.
• Onboarding new team members to an internal repository.
• Answering the same "how do I run the tests?" question for the tenth time.

How to Use It

1. Enter the project name and repository URL.
2. List the setup commands and the test and lint commands, one per line.
3. Choose the main branch, the commit message style and which requirements to include.
4. Click Generate CONTRIBUTING.md and save the file in the repository root or .github/.

Example

With the setup commands npm install and cp .env.example .env and the test command npm test, the guide includes a numbered setup section with those commands in code blocks and a pull request checklist that asks contributors to run npm test first.

Understanding the Output

The guide has a table of contents, bug and feature reporting guidance, development setup, a "making a change" section, commit message rules (Conventional Commits or plain descriptive messages) and a pull request checklist. Commands you enter are copied as text - they are never run.

Limitations

The generator cannot know your project's architecture or review rules, so add anything specific to your team afterwards. Pair it with a CODEOWNERS file for automatic reviewers, a SECURITY.md for vulnerability reports, and conventional commit messages from the Git Commit Message Generator.