I keep coming across files in GitHub that have some mystic magic feeling to them. There’s always a small incantation to come with them: the have to have the right name, the right extension and have to be stored in the right directory. I wanted to have an overview of all these spells for myself, so here we are 😉.

Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash

Overview

A list of all the magic files / links that I came across in GitHub. I also created a LinkedIn Learning Course for ~25 of these files, with more detail how to use them. You can find that course on LinkedIn Learning.

Filename	Location	.github repo support	Description	Docs
CNAME	root	no	Alias for the GitHub Pages site	Docs
CONTRIBUTING.md	root, /docs or /.github	yes	How to contribute to a project	Guidelines
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md	root, /docs or /.github	yes	Code of conduct	How to behave for this project Code of Conduct
CODEOWNERS	root, /docs or /.github		List of people who can make changes to the files or folders	Code owners info
CITATION.cff, CITATION.md, and others	root or inst/CITATION	no	Let others know how to citate your work	cff
LICENSE or LICENSE.md or LICENSE.txt or LICENSE.rst	root	no		License
FUNDING.yml	.github folder	yes	Display a Sponsor button in your repo and send people to platforms where they can fund your development	Docs
SECURITY.md	root, .github or docs folder	yes	Instructions for how to report a security vulnerability	Security policy
SUPPORT.md	root, .github or docs folder	yes	Tell people how to get help for the code in the repo	Docs
workflow.yml	workflow-templates	only available in .github repo	Store starter workflows for your organizations	Starter workflow templates
dependabot.yml	.github/		Dependabot configuration file	Dependabot configuration
codeql-config.yml	.github/codeql/codeql-config.yml (convention, not required)	sort of	CodeQL configuration file. Can also be stored in an external repository (hence .github repo works). If using external repo, referencing can by done by using owner/repository/filename@branch	CodeQL config
secret_scanning.yml	.github/secret_scanning.yml		Secret scanning configuration file	Secret scanning
README.md	.github, root, or docs directory	yes, see below	Project readme, also used on marketplace if the repo is published to the marketplace	About readme’s
README.md	.github/username/username		Profile readme	About readme’s
README.md	organizations .github repo or .github-private repo: profile/README.md		Organization readme	Organization readme
release.yml	.github	Automatically generated release notes		Automatically generated release notes
workflow.yml	.github/workflows/			Workflows
action.yml/action.yaml	root		Configuration file for an actions repository
dependency-review-config.yml	.github	no	Dependency review configuration file	Dependency review
$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY	workflow		Job summary output in markdown	Job summary

Then there is a whole list of templates you can configure for issues / pull requests / discussion:

Filename	Location	.github repo support	Description	Docs
FORM-NAME.yml	.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/		Issue templates with forms (in Beta for github.com, not available for GHES)	Templates
config.yml	.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/		Issue templates configuration settings	Template chooser
issue_template.md	.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/	yes	Issue template	Template
Url query	In the url link		Create an issue with certain fields filled in with values	Create issue with url query
pull_request_template.md	root, /docs, /.github or in the PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE directory	yes	Create the default body for a Pull Request	Using a PR template
Discussion category templates	/.github/DISCUSSION_CATEGORY_TEMPLATES	?	Create discussion category templates	Create discussion category forms

Some of these are extra tricky, like for example the organization profile lives in a different directory and repo then the user profile readme: .github or in .github-private repo in the org and then in a folder named profile: README.md.

Magic links

There are also some magic links that can be super useful.

Link setup	Description	Documentation
github.com/OWNER/REPO/releases/latest	Permalink to the latest release	Permalink to latest release
github.com/userhandle.keys	Get the public part of a users SSH key
github.com/userhandle.gpg	Get the public part of a users GPG key
github.com/userhandle.png	Get the profile picture of a user
avatars.githubusercontent.com/userhandle?s=32	Easy method to show user profile pictures anywhere. The s parameter is the size. Example output:
github.com/owner/repo#readme	Scroll the repo link to open up with the README text on the page. Since GitHub shows the file content of the repo first, this can be helpful to push you users down the page into the README section. This works because the README is based on a header in the page, so this is just normal HTML behaviour.

Atom feeds

A lot of things have atom feeds enabled. The things in all caps need to be configured:

Link setup	Description
github.com/OWNER/REPO/commits.atom	Get an RSS feed for the commits in that repo
github.com/OWNER/REPO/commits/BRANCH.atom	Get an RSS feed for all the commits in that branch
github.com/OWNER/REPO/wiki.atom	Feed for the wiki in that repo
github.com/OWNER/REPO/discussions.atom	Get an RSS feed for the discussions in that repo
github.com/OWNER/REPO/releases.atom	Get an RSS feed for the releases in that repo
github.com/USER.atom	Get an RSS feed for the user’s public activity
github.com/security-advisories	Get an RSS feed for ALL the security advisories

There should also be a feed for issues, but I continuously get HTTP:406 errors on github.com/OWNER/REPO/issues.atom. Other user specific feeds can be loaded by making an authenticated call to https://api.github.com/feeds.