Fork a repository

Fork a repository in GitHub — with the four heights of help laid out: do it now, make it easier for the next person to accept, work out the right move when you are stuck, and learn the pattern so it stops coming back.

4prompt heights
Open it in the interactive atlas →

The four heights

The same task, four distances: today's deadline, the next reviewer, the stuck moment, the pattern.

Execute — do the immediate task

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I forked the repo owned by arnav-dev that we need for the integration tests. Send the newly created…
I forked the repo owned by arnav-dev that we need for the integration tests. Send the newly created fork to Lina and Marco and ask them to confirm they can push branches and open pull requests from it by Friday; if either cannot, give them instructions to grant my account write access to their fork and pause test work until confirmed.

Improve — make it easier to accept

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Before I hand this fork to the team, make it obvious which branch is the working copy, surface any…
Before I hand this fork to the team, make it obvious which branch is the working copy, surface any open issues or PRs carried over from the original repo, and flag any large files over 10 MB that will break CI. Create a short checklist for Lina to follow when she first clones so she can verify remotes and push rights without asking me.

Decide — diagnose the stuck moment

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I forked arnav-dev/analytics and my clone only has main. Lina needs feature branches and to push CI…

I clicked Fork and the clone shows no branches besides main

I forked arnav-dev/analytics and my clone only has main. Lina needs feature branches and to push CI changes, but I don't know if the original had named branches or if I missed an option. Tell me the likely cause and the exact steps I should run locally and on the web UI so Lina can see and use the same branches, plus what to say to her if branches still don't appear.

Become — change the pattern

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In the last three forks I created for open-source contributors, the work stalls because they can't…

Every time I fork a repo teammates can't push to it

In the last three forks I created for open-source contributors, the work stalls because they can't push branches or CI fails. Where am I losing time or trust? Recommend one habit change I can adopt when forking (what checks to run, how to name the fork, and an onboarding message to paste in issue or PR) so collaborators can start work immediately.

Next to this one

Other code hosting work people do in GitHub.

Every task here came from the work, not from a feature list — which is why the prompts name what you want done and never the button that does it. The tool changes; the work does not.
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The rest of the map

Same library, five ways in.