Open a Gitback Board for your repo and claim it

A Gitback Board is the feedback, roadmap, changelog and FAQ page for one GitHub repository, built live from that repository's Discussions, Issues and Releases. Getting one takes two steps: open the Board by pasting the repository's URL, then claim it by proving you have write access on GitHub.

How do I open a Board for my repository?

Go to Open a Board, paste the repository's URL and submit. The form sends you straight to the Board at /github/<owner>/<repo>; nothing is copied or imported first, because the repository is the database.

The field accepts whatever is in your clipboard:

• the repository's address, with or without https:// and www.;
• a deeper link such as an issue or a file, from which only the owner and repository are kept;
• the .git URL that git clone uses;
• the bare owner/repo shorthand.

Anything on another host, or a name that breaks GitHub's own naming rules, is refused with a message quoting what you pasted.

What does a Board look like before anyone claims it?

An unclaimed Board already works: its five Modules (feedback, roadmap, changelog, FAQ and issues) read from the repository. It is also deliberately quiet. Every page carries noindex, nofollow, a banner says the Board was built by a visitor and is hidden from search, and it stays out of the sitemap that lists claimed Boards.

The banner has two buttons. Claim Board starts the claim. Remove Board is the takedown: it checks that the person pressing it has write access, then blocks the repository permanently, and only a claim from an account with write access reopens it.

How do I claim the Board?

Press Claim Board on the banner. The steps that follow:

1. If you are not signed in, you are sent to sign in with GitHub and brought back to the claim afterwards. For a public repository the sign-in asks for public_repo and read:user; for a private one it asks for repo and read:user.
2. Gitback asks GitHub one question, repository { viewerPermission }, using your own token. The screen says so while it waits: one question to GitHub, nothing written.
3. If GitHub answers ADMIN, MAINTAIN or WRITE, you are the Board's Client. A public repository's Board opens on its home page, and a private repository's Board takes you to its pricing page, because private Boards are part of a paid Plan.

If GitHub answers anything else, the screen names your login and the permission GitHub reported, and reminds you that you can still read, vote, post and ask on the Board. If GitHub does not answer at all, the screen says the check could not run and offers to check again.

Why does Gitback check write access instead of letting me invite people?

Write access on GitHub is the only authority Gitback recognises, and it grants none of its own. That choice has two consequences worth knowing.

The claim is re-checked. A stored answer counts as fresh for one hour by default, and after that GitHub is asked again, so someone who loses write access on the repository stops being a Client within that interval, without anyone in Gitback revoking anything.

Gitback also has no invitation of its own: Client status is derived from GitHub write access and never granted independently. To let a colleague manage the Board, give them write access to the repository on GitHub; they claim the Board the same way you did.

What changes once the Board is claimed?

A claimed Board is the published one. It drops the unclaimed banner, and it is listed in Gitback's Board sitemap so search engines can find it. Feedback, comments and votes left on it are written into your repository as real GitHub objects by the accounts that leave them, which is why an End User must sign in with GitHub to write.

Open-source Boards are free on every Plan. What a paid Plan adds, private Boards and Custom Domains, is on the pricing page.