Creating a project

Learn how to create an organization or user project.

In this article

Projects are an adaptable collection of items that stay up-to-date with GitHub data. Your projects can track issues, pull requests, and ideas that you note down. You can add custom fields and create views for specific purposes.

You can also choose to use an existing project as a template and copy the views and custom fields to a new project. For more information, see "Copying an existing project."

Creating a project

Creating an organization project

Organization projects can track issues and pull requests from the organization's repositories. You can also set projects in your organization as templates, and curate a list of recommended templates to highlight, that other organization members can then use as the base for the projects they create. For more information, see "Managing project templates in your organization."

  1. In the upper-right corner of GitHub, select your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

  2. Click the name of your organization.

  3. Under your organization name, click Projects.

    Screenshot showing profile tabs. The 'Projects' tab is highlighted with an orange outline.

  4. Click New project.

  5. Select which type of project or template you want to use.

    • To create a blank project, under "Start from scratch", click Table, Roadmap, or Board.
    • To create a project from a template, click the template you want to use. You can select from the built-in templates curated by GitHub, the templates created by your organization, and the recommended templates that have been chosen by your organization.

  6. Optionally, if you selected a template, review the fields, views, workflows, and insights that will be created.

  7. In the text box under "Project name", type a name for your new project.

  8. Click Create project.

Creating a user project

User projects can track issues and pull requests from the repositories owned by your personal account.

  1. In the top right corner of GitHub, click your profile photo, then click Your profile.

    Screenshot of the dropdown menu under @octocat's profile picture. "Your profile" is outlined in dark orange.

  2. On your profile, click Projects.

    Screenshot showing profile tabs. The 'Projects' tab is highlighted with an orange outline.

  3. Click New project.

  4. Select which type of project or template you want to use.

    • To create a blank project, under "Start from scratch", click Table, Roadmap, or Board.
    • To create a project from a template, click the built-in template that you want to use.

  5. Optionally, if you selected a template, review the fields, views, workflows, and insights that will be created.

  6. In the text box under "Project name", type a name for your new project.

  7. Click Create project.

Updating your project description and README

You can set your project's description and README to share the purpose of your project, provide instructions on how to use the project, and include any relevant links.

  1. Navigate to your project.

  2. In the top-right, click to open the menu.

    Screenshot showing a project's menu bar. The menu icon is highlighted with an orange outline.

  3. In the menu, click Settings to access the project settings.

  4. To add a short description to your project, under "Add a description", type your description in the text box and click Save.

  5. To update your project's README, under "README", type your content in the text box.

    • You can format your README using Markdown. For more information, see "Basic writing and formatting syntax."
    • To toggle between the text box and a preview of your changes, click or .

  6. To save changes to your README, click Save.

You can view and make quick changes to your project description and README by navigating to your project and clicking in the top right.

Further reading