beautify-github-profile: the username/username rule and a list of badge links

The repository you create has to be named username/username

The only hard requirement sits in the first step. Create a repository whose name matches your GitHub username, then add a README.md to it. The README gives the shape as a template:

https://github.com/username/username

and shows the author's own instance of it:

https://github.com/rzashakeri/rzashakeri

Everything else in the guide hangs off that one file, because GitHub renders the README of a repository named after your account as your profile page. Get the name wrong, or change the capitalisation, and all the work you do inside stays off your profile. That is the entire setup step. There is no generator to run, no package to add, and nothing to configure before you start.

GitHub reports no primary language and the project has no releases

GitHub reports no primary language for this repository, and it has never cut a release. The listing shows why. What sits at the top level is `readme.md`, `readme-fa.md`, `LICENSE`, `CONTRIBUTING.md`, `CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md`, a `.github/` directory, and then a run of images: `cover-repo.jpg`, `my-badges.png`, `name.png`, `readme.png`, `result(4).png`, `spotify-data-card.svg`, `state.png`, `terminal.gif`, `todoist-stat.png`, `vaunt-card.png` and `wrapped.png`. This is documentation with screenshots attached. The consequence is worth knowing before you plan anything: there is nothing to install, nothing to pin to a version, and no upgrade to schedule. When the guide points at a tool, that tool lives in someone else's repository, and this one has no say over its release cycle. The last push here was on 2026-11-01.

Ideas come from a gallery of other profiles, not from a spec

The guide sends you to a place before it sends you to any tool. Under its own question about where to get ideas, it points at a single site:

https://zzetao.github.io/awesome-github-profile/

Read it as a gallery of other people's profile READMEs. The workflow is browse, pick a layout you like, then hunt for a tool that produces something similar. Nothing is ranked or compared. That leaves taste borrowed from whoever updated their profile last, and it leaves you with no answer to the questions a specification would settle: how the layout holds up on a narrow screen, and how it degrades when your README is read as plain text in a terminal or through an API that ignores relative image sizing.

Each tool arrives as a link while its example stays a rendered image

The badge section is numbered, and the numbering runs past twenty. Entry one is shields.io, described as concise, consistent, legible badges in SVG and raster format with custom values. After that come markdown-badges, Badges 4 README.md Profile, For The Badge, Badgen, Badges for GitHub, Custom Icon Badges, simple badges, pepy, ColoredBadges, Discord Md Badge and Stackoverflow Badge among others. Each entry is a name, a URL and one line of description. Below it the guide repeats that there is an example, and the example is an embedded image, not the markup that produces it. In the badge list, you follow the link, read that project's own instructions, and assemble your profile from whatever it tells you.

Profile view counters count you with somebody else's service

Several entries exist only to put a number in your profile header, and those numbers come from outside GitHub. Entry four is antonkomarev/github-profile-views-counter, described as a free cloud micro-service that counts how many times your profile has been viewed. Entry ten is u8views, described as tracking views and analysing statistics, with its example linking to a u8views.com profile page. Entry seventeen is hits, a hit counter for GitHub or any website. None of these is a GitHub metric and none of it belongs to you. If the service is down, rate limited, or quietly changes what it counts, the badge freezes on a stale figure or breaks, and a frozen counter looks more authoritative than no counter at all.

One listed entry already admits its demo page stopped working

The entry for bokub/gradient-badge carries an italic note saying the demo page does not work anymore, while the service itself is still reachable through a URL. That working form is:

https://gradgen.bokub.workers.dev/npm/v/gradient-badge?gradient=b65cff,11cbfa

That endpoint is a worker deployment belonging to the badge's author, so the image is rendered by something outside this repository and outside GitHub. The note is the most useful line in the guide, and it also names the general problem: appearing in this list is evidence that somebody once thought the entry worth linking, not evidence that it still answers. The other entries shown carry no such warning. Open each URL before it goes into the README GitHub will render on your profile.

One Persian README, and the walkthrough itself lives on Instagram

Translation is partial, and the guided part is off-repository. The top level carries `readme.md` alongside `readme-fa.md`, and the README links a Persian guide for the first step to an Instagram post. So the written text is bilingual while the instruction is unversioned. If a step changes on that post, this repository has no record of it and no way to roll the wording back to what you read last month. The same applies to every linked project, since none of them is pinned to a commit here. Audit the sources you actually copied from, not this index.

CC0 covers the assets and .github covers conduct, but there is no code to contribute

The licence is CC0-1.0, an unusual choice for something that looks like a repository and a sensible one for a folder of screenshots and templates, because CC0 places those assets in the public domain instead of asking for attribution. Lift a card or a layout without crediting anyone, including this project. Next to that sit `CONTRIBUTING.md`, `CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md` and the `.github/` directory, so governance is in place even though there is no program to govern. That combination is the honest description of the project: a community-facing index with a contribution process attached, last pushed on 2026-11-01, on the `master` branch, with no tagged version to point anyone at.

Editorial conclusion

Use this repository if you are starting a GitHub profile README from nothing and want a shortlist of badge and widget services to evaluate one by one. Leave it if you need copy-paste markup, a generated template or a tool you can pin to a version, because what lives here is one README, a Persian translation, screenshots and more than twenty links, with no release and a last push on 2026-11-01. Before you copy any badge into the README that renders on your profile, open the linked project and confirm it still responds, since the gradient-badge entry already records a demo page that stopped working and the other entries shown carry no such warning.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: CC0-1.0
3. README
4. rzashakeri/beautify-github-profile on GitHub