repometa

One command to stamp a GitHub repo with topics, a description and a homepage. No more clicking topics in one by one, no more gluing a giant gh repo edit --add-topic ... --add-topic ... by hand. Presets cover the stacks you reach for every week.

repometa apply --repo tantaneity/repometa --preset fastapi
repometa apply --repo owner/name --topics python,docker --desc "tiny cli"
repometa preset list

Why

I spin up a repo roughly once a week and my hands keep doing the same dance: same topic set per stack, same description shape, sometimes a homepage link. So this just does it in one shot, and the topics stay in sync across similar projects.

Install

uv tool install repometa

uv drops repometa into an isolated tool venv and puts it on your PATH, so it runs from any repo folder. Want the latest straight from source instead? Point uv at the repo:

uv tool install git+https://github.com/tantaneity/repometa

Auth

The CLI needs a GitHub token with repo scope (a fine-grained token with Administration write works too). It looks in two places, in order:

1. GITHUB_TOKEN, from the environment or a local .env
2. git credential fill for github.com, if you are already signed in to git

So if git already knows your GitHub login, you usually need to set nothing. Otherwise drop a token in .env (see .env.example) or export it.

gh is never required, which matters on Windows where it may not sit on PATH.

Usage

apply is the workhorse:

--repo      -r   Target as owner/name (required)
--preset    -p   Named topic set to apply
--topics    -t   Extra topics, comma-separated
--desc      -d   Repository description
--homepage       Homepage URL

Preset and extra topics merge, then dedupe:

repometa apply -r owner/name -p fastapi -t auth,redis

That sends fastapi, python, sqlalchemy, alembic, docker, async, auth, redis. Topics get lowercased and validated before anything hits the API (GitHub only allows lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, up to 50 chars, up to 20 per repo). Leave out --preset and --topics and existing topics stay untouched, only the metadata you pass gets written.

Presets

Built in:

• fastapi → fastapi, python, sqlalchemy, alembic, docker, async
• nestjs → nestjs, typescript, nodejs, postgresql, docker
• unity → unity, csharp, gamedev
• react → react, typescript, frontend, vite

List everything (built-ins plus yours):

repometa preset list

Your own presets

Drop a presets.toml at ~/.config/repometa/presets.toml. Same name as a built-in overrides it.

[presets]
go = ["go", "golang", "backend"]
django = ["django", "python", "postgresql", "celery"]

How it talks to GitHub

Topics ride their own endpoint, PUT /repos/{owner}/{repo}/topics. Description and homepage go through PATCH /repos/{owner}/{repo}. They are separate calls because topics never travel through the PATCH body.

Develop

uv sync
uv run pytest