If you team competes in the Software & AI village or wants to
apply for the Best Software Tool prize, you MUST host all the
code of your team's software tool in this repository, main branch. By the Wiki Freeze, a
release will be automatically created as the judging artifact of
this software tool. You will be able to keep working on your software after the Grand Jamboree.
If your team does not have any software tool, you can totally ignore this repository. If left unchanged, this repository will be automatically deleted by the end of the season.
Let people know what your project can do specifically. Provide context and add a link to any reference visitors might be unfamiliar with (for example your team wiki). A list of Features or a Background subsection can also be added here. If there are alternatives to your project, this is a good place to list differentiating factors.
Within a particular ecosystem, there may be a common way of installing things, such as using Yarn, NuGet, or Homebrew. However, consider the possibility that whoever is reading your README is a novice and would like more guidance. Listing specific steps helps remove ambiguity and gets people to using your project as quickly as possible. If it only runs in a specific context like a particular programming language version or operating system or has dependencies that have to be installed manually, also add a Requirements subsection.
Use examples liberally, and show the expected output if you can. It's helpful to have inline the smallest example of usage that you can demonstrate, while providing links to more sophisticated examples if they are too long to reasonably include in the README.
State if you are open to contributions and what your requirements are for accepting them.
For people who want to make changes to your project, it's helpful to have some documentation on how to get started. Perhaps there is a script that they should run or some environment variables that they need to set. Make these steps explicit. These instructions could also be useful to your future self.
You can also document commands to lint the code or run tests. These steps help to ensure high code quality and reduce the likelihood that the changes inadvertently break something. Having instructions for running tests is especially helpful if it requires external setup, such as starting a Selenium server for testing in a browser.
Show your appreciation to those who have contributed to the project.