Repo Baseline

Every new repo I create needs the same handful of settings: branch protection, required reviews, no force pushes. Setting that up by hand in GitHub’s UI every time is the kind of small, repetitive chore that’s easy to skip, which is exactly when a repo ends up without it. Repo Baseline is a single script that applies it consistently instead.

What it sets

Running scripts/apply-baseline.sh <owner/repo> [check name]... applies a ruleset on the default branch: changes only land through a pull request with at least one approving review, every commit must be signed, force pushes are blocked, and any status checks you pass in must pass before a merge is allowed. It also turns on delete_branch_on_merge, so a PR’s branch is cleaned up automatically once it merges. Re-running the script is safe — if a repo already has the ruleset, it’s backed up locally and updated in place rather than duplicated.

Dropping the skill layer it started with

The first version paired the script with a Claude Code skill and an installer, so it could be set up and invoked through Claude Code directly. In practice I was just running the script from the terminal, and the extra layer was more to maintain than it was saving me. I cut it back to the plain script and its two JSON settings files — the README now covers exactly how to use it and nothing else. It’s a small reminder that not every tool needs to be wrapped in automation; sometimes a script you run by hand is the simpler, more maintainable choice.