The Repository

The repository is part of the work. For a portfolio it may be read more carefully than the application itself, because it is where somebody technical looks to see how you think.

Commit history in the imperative, each commit one coherent change. A .gitignore written before the files it excludes exist. No secrets, ever, and check the history rather than only the working tree. Branches for features, and at least one pull request you reviewed and merged yourself.

The README is the front door. What it does in one sentence a non-programmer would understand. A screenshot. The live URL. How to run it locally, exactly, from a clean checkout. The architecture in a paragraph and a diagram. One decision you made and why. One thing you would do differently.

That last pair is what separates an engineer from a student, and it is what a reviewer reads first.