About README.md Generator

Generate a README template with title, description, install, usage, license. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Generators collection.

Use Cases

• New project creators bootstrapping documentation from scratch
• Open-source contributors standardizing project landing pages
• Hackathon teams quickly generating presentable project docs
• Engineering managers templating README standards across teams

Tips

• Fill in the template sections to avoid blank README syndrome
• Include install and usage sections for contributor onboarding
• Add a license section to clarify open-source terms upfront

Fun Facts

• GitHub added automatic README rendering in April 2009, but the convention of including a README file dates back to the 1970s in DEC PDP-10 software distributions.
• The .md extension for Markdown was popularized by GitHub around 2008; John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown in 2004 as a human-readable text format.
• A 2018 study by GitHub found that repositories with README files receive 30% more contributions on average than those without one.

FAQ

What sections does it scaffold?

Title, description, installation, usage, features, config, API (if applicable), contributing, license, acknowledgments. Skip sections you don't need.

Does it follow common README conventions?

Yes — matches the most-starred-repo conventions on GitHub. Badges at the top, code blocks for examples, relative links for contributing guides.

What about badges?

Toggle to include Shields.io badge stubs for version, build status, license, npm downloads. You fill in the actual values after your CI is set up.

TypeScript-specific?

Not particularly — the README scaffold is language-agnostic. For TS-specific README sections (type definitions, npm publishing), edit manually or use a framework-specific generator.