Scaffolding Repos

Repo setup

Install or refresh the four things every one of the owner's repos should carry: a generic .gitignore, an LF-normalizing .gitattributes, a CHANGELOG.md (Keep a Changelog + SemVer), and the ## Repo profile marker in the root CLAUDE.md.

Idempotent and non-destructive. If a file already exists, show a diff of what you would change and ask before writing. Never clobber an existing CHANGELOG.md or hand-tuned .gitignore; merge missing entries in instead.

LICENSE check. While in the repo, check for a LICENSE file. If there is none, flag it to the owner: these repos are public, and a public repo without a license is all-rights-reserved by default, which usually contradicts the intent. Do not pick or install a license yourself; the choice belongs to the owner.

1. Determine the profile

Decide two things, asking the owner if they are not already obvious:

• Lock: locked (protected main, feature branch + PR, owner merges and publishes) or free (commit straight to main).
• Docs language: en or fr.

2. Write .gitignore and .gitattributes

These two files live next to this skill, in templates/. Copy and rename:

• templates/gitignore -> .gitignore
• templates/gitattributes -> .gitattributes

The rules are identical in every language; only the comments differ. The template comments are English. For a fr repo, swap each comment line using this table:

When .gitattributes lands in a repo that already has commits, the new rules do not rewrite the files already in the index on their own. Run git add --renormalize . afterwards and look at git status: if files were renormalized, commit them separately (chore: normalize line endings) so the line-ending noise never mixes with a real change.

3. Create CHANGELOG.md

If there is no CHANGELOG.md, copy templates/CHANGELOG.md, next to this skill, to the repo root as is. The boilerplate is English whatever the docs language: the official French translation of Keep a Changelog shows the very same English example (title, intro sentences, [Unreleased]), so a fr repo keeps the English preamble and headings and writes only its bullets in French. Do not translate the file. Then start tracking changes under [Unreleased] with the standard English change-type names (see the committing skill).

4. Append ecosystem entries

The generic .gitignore only covers the universal set (Claude files, OS, IDE, backups). Offer to append the entries the detected stack needs, for example:

• Node: node_modules/, dist/, build/, *.log, *.tsbuildinfo, coverage/, .env, .env.local
• Python: __pycache__/, *.pyc, .venv/, .pytest_cache/, dist/, *.egg-info/
• Rust: target/
• Always, if relevant: .env and any secret or local database files.
• Claude Code: the template ignores .claude/ whole. If the repo carries a .claude/settings.json meant to be shared (a team permission allowlist, hooks), replace the .claude/ line with .claude/* followed by !.claude/settings.json. The * matters: git cannot re-include a file whose parent directory is excluded, so a bare ! after .claude/ does nothing. settings.local.json and the rest of the folder stay ignored.

5. Write the Repo profile marker

Add or refresh this section in the root CLAUDE.md (create a minimal CLAUDE.md if none exists). CLAUDE.md is gitignored, so the marker stays local. The committing and releasing skills read the literal Lock: and Docs language: tokens.

## Repo profile (read by the github skills)

- Lock: locked   <!-- locked = feature branch + PR ; free = commit straight to main -->
- Docs language: en   <!-- en | fr -->

Set the two values to the profile from step 1.

Marker-only mode. When committing or releasing only need the profile recorded and the repo already has its other generic files, write just this section into the root CLAUDE.md directly; do not run the rest of this skill. Those skills do this inline, so the full scaffold is reserved for a repo that needs its generic files installed or refreshed.

6. Commit the scaffold

Run the committing checklist and commit the generic files as one chore: commit (subject in the docs language, for example chore: add generic repo files), following the lock. Keep it apart from the renormalization commit of step 2 and from any code change made in the same session, so the scaffold stays a single, revertable concern.