Standard Readme is a specification and tooling standard for README files in open source projects.
The project addresses the difficulty and inconsistency of writing and maintaining README documentation. It provides a formal specification defining how a standard README should be structured, ensuring that documentation consistently covers essential information like why a module should be used, how to install it, and how to use it. By establishing this structure, the tool reduces the cognitive load on both maintainers writing documentation and users searching for information within it. The specification enables automated tooling to validate, generate, and maintain README files against the standard.
Standard Readme is designed primarily for open source libraries, though it originated in Node and npm projects and applies to libraries in other languages and package managers. Developers should adopt it when they want to ensure consistent documentation practices across a project or organization, or when they value having automated linting and generation tools available. The project provides a linter for validating existing READMEs against the specification, a generator for creating new standard READMEs, and example implementations demonstrating the specification in practice. The specification itself is the core deliverable, with supporting tools available as separate repositories.
The project maintains a clear specification document alongside working examples and tooling references. Development activity shows ongoing engagement with the specification's evolution, including documented issues tracking improvements to the linter and other supporting tools. The project remains actively maintained as a reference standard for README documentation practices.
