A GitHub Action that automatically generates & updates markdown content (like your README.md)

1. Create a markscribe template and place it anywhere in a repository that you automatically want to update. In this guide we will use templates/README.md.tpl.

You can find an example template that I use to automatically update my GitHub profile here: https://github.com/muesli/markscribe/blob/master/templates/github-profile.tpl

2. In order to access some of GitHub's API, you need to provide a valid GitHub token as a secret called PERSONAL_GITHUB_TOKEN. You can create a new token by going to your profile settings:

Developer settings > Personal access tokens > Generate new token

Depending on your template you will need access to different API scopes. If you want to support the full set of features, tick the checkboxes next to these scopes: read:user, repo:status, public_repo, read:org. Check out the markscribe documentation for a detailed list of required scopes for each individual template function.

Now create a new secret in your repository's Settings and enter that token.

3. Create a new GitHub workflow in your repository: .github/workflows/readme-scribe.yml

name: Update README

on:
  push:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 */1 * * *"

jobs:
  markscribe:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@master

      - uses: muesli/readme-scribe@master
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          template: "templates/README.md.tpl"
          writeTo: "README.md"

      - uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v4
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          commit_message: Update generated README
          branch: main
          commit_user_name: readme-scribe 🤖
          commit_user_email: actions@github.com
          commit_author: readme-scribe 🤖 <actions@github.com>

Careful: if you use master instead of main as the default branch, you will need to update the above config for git-auto-commit-action accordingly.

This action will be triggered once per hour, parses templates/README.md.tpl and generates a new README.md for you, and eventually pushes the changes to the master branch. Make sure to adjust the input values template and writeTo to suit your needs.