Complete Guide to GitHub Achievements

GitHub achievements are digital badges that recognize and celebrate your contributions and activities on the platform. Introduced in 2022, these achievements gamify the development experience, encouraging users to explore different features and contribute in various ways.

GitHub Achievements List 📋

Why GitHub Achievements Matter

• Motivation: Achievements provide tangible recognition for your coding efforts
• Skill Development: They encourage you to explore different GitHub features and workflows
• Community Recognition: Badges showcase your expertise and contributions to others
• Fun Factor: They add a gamified element to your development journey

All GitHub Achievements and How to Earn Them

Below is a comprehensive guide to all current GitHub achievements, with detailed instructions on how to earn each one.

🌟 Starstruck

Description: Awarded when your repository reaches a certain number of stars, showing that others find your work valuable and interesting.

Tiers:

• Bronze: 16 stars
• Silver: 128 stars
• Gold: 512 stars

How to Earn:

1. Create a valuable repository with useful code, documentation, or resources
2. Share your repository on social media, relevant communities, or developer forums
3. Engage with users who open issues or submit pull requests
4. Maintain and update your repository regularly to keep it relevant

Pro Tip: Repositories with clear documentation, solving common problems, or offering unique tools tend to attract more stars. Consider creating a repository that addresses a specific need in the developer community.

👯 Pair Extraordinaire

Description: Awarded for co-authoring a pull request that gets merged. This achievement celebrates collaboration and teamwork in software development.

How to Earn:

1. Collaborate with another developer on code changes
2. When committing, include a co-author using the proper format:

   git commit -m "Feature: Add new functionality
   
   Co-authored-by: Collaborator Name <collaborator@example.com>"
   

3. Push the changes and create a pull request
4. Get the pull request merged

Note: The co-author must have a GitHub account, and the email must match their GitHub-verified email. Both you and your co-author will receive the achievement when the PR is merged.

🤠 Quickdraw

Description: Awarded for closing an issue or pull request within 5 minutes of opening it. This achievement recognizes your quick problem-solving skills.

How to Earn:

1. Open an issue or pull request in any repository where you have write access
2. Close it within 5 minutes of creation
3. That's it! The achievement will appear on your profile

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Go to any repository where you have write permissions (your own repositories work best)
2. Click on the "Issues" tab
3. Click the green "New issue" button
4. Give it a title like "Test for Quickdraw achievement"
5. Submit the issue
6. Immediately go back to the issue and click "Close issue"
7. Make sure the entire process takes less than 5 minutes

Pro Tip: This is one of the easiest achievements to earn. You can create a private test repository specifically for earning this achievement if you don't want to clutter your existing repositories.

🦈 Pull Shark

Description: Awarded for having multiple pull requests merged. This achievement recognizes your contributions to projects through accepted code changes.

Tiers:

• Bronze: 2 merged pull requests
• Silver: 16 merged pull requests
• Gold: 128 merged pull requests

How to Earn:

1. Find repositories accepting contributions (look for "good first issue" labels)
2. Fork the repository and create a branch for your changes
3. Make meaningful changes that follow the project's contribution guidelines
4. Submit a pull request with a clear description of your changes
5. Respond to any feedback and make requested changes
6. Repeat the process for multiple repositories or issues

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Search for repositories with "help wanted" or "good first issue" tags
2. Fork the repository by clicking the "Fork" button at the top right
3. Clone your fork to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/repository-name.git
   

4. Create a new branch for your changes:

   git checkout -b fix/your-feature-name
   

5. Make your changes and commit them:

   git add .
   git commit -m "Fix: Description of your changes"
   

6. Push your branch to your fork:

   git push origin fix/your-feature-name
   

7. Go to the original repository and create a pull request from your branch
8. Wait for the maintainers to review and merge your PR

Pro Tip: Start with documentation improvements or bug fixes for easier approval. Hacktoberfest (October) is a great time to earn this achievement as many projects actively welcome contributions.

🧠 Galaxy Brain

Description: Awarded for having your answers accepted in GitHub Discussions. This achievement recognizes your knowledge-sharing and community support.

Tiers:

• Bronze: 2 accepted answers
• Silver: 8 accepted answers
• Gold: 16 accepted answers

How to Earn:

1. Find repositories with active Discussions tabs
2. Look for questions you can answer thoroughly
3. Provide detailed, helpful answers
4. If the repository maintainer marks your answer as the solution, you earn progress toward this achievement

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Look for popular repositories that have enabled the Discussions feature (visible as a tab next to Issues and Pull Requests)
2. Browse through the discussions to find questions that you can answer
3. Click on a question and use the comment box to provide a comprehensive answer
4. Include code examples, screenshots, or links to documentation when relevant
5. If the repository maintainer or the person who asked the question marks your answer as the solution (with a checkmark), you'll earn progress toward this achievement

Pro Tip: Focus on repositories related to technologies you're familiar with. GitHub's own repositories and major open-source projects often have active discussion forums where you can contribute your expertise.

😎 YOLO

Description: Awarded for merging a pull request without code review. The name comes from "You Only Live Once" - representing the risk-taking spirit of merging code without review.

How to Earn:

1. Open a pull request in a repository where you have write access
2. Merge the pull request without requesting or receiving any reviews
3. Note: This is not recommended for production code or collaborative projects

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Create or go to a repository where you have admin or write permissions
2. Make a change to a file or create a new file in a new branch
3. Create a pull request for your changes
4. Instead of requesting reviews, immediately click the "Merge pull request" button
5. Confirm the merge

Warning: While this achievement is fun to earn, it promotes a practice that's generally discouraged in professional development. Use with caution! Only do this in personal or test repositories, never in production or collaborative projects where code quality is important.

🧊 Arctic Code Vault Contributor

Description: Awarded for contributing code to repositories in the 2020 GitHub Archive Program. This historic achievement recognizes those who contributed to repositories that were preserved in the Arctic Code Vault.

How it Was Earned:

• This was a special achievement for contributors to repositories archived in the GitHub Arctic Code Vault on July 16, 2020
• Contributions had to be made before February 2, 2020, to repositories that were included in the Arctic Code Vault program
• The Arctic Code Vault is a data repository preserved in the Arctic World Archive, a very-long-term archival facility in Svalbard, Norway

Historical Context: The GitHub Archive Program is an initiative to preserve open source software for future generations. The Arctic Code Vault is part of this program, where GitHub took a snapshot of all active public repositories on February 2, 2020, and stored them on film reels designed to last for 1,000 years. The achievement recognizes developers whose code was included in this historic preservation effort.

Note: It's no longer possible to earn this achievement unless GitHub runs a similar program in the future. If you contributed to popular open-source projects before February 2020, check your profile to see if you have it.

🚁 Mars 2020 Helicopter Contributor

Description: Awarded for contributing to repositories used in the Mars 2020 Helicopter Mission. This prestigious achievement recognizes developers whose code helped power the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars.

How it Was Earned:

• This special achievement was given to developers who contributed to open-source libraries used in the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter
• GitHub identified contributors to specific repositories and dependencies that were used in the helicopter's software
• The badge was awarded in April 2021 to coincide with the first flight of Ingenuity on Mars

Historical Context: The Mars Ingenuity Helicopter made history as the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet. Its software relied on numerous open-source projects and libraries. GitHub collaborated with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to identify the open-source projects that contributed to the mission's success and recognized those contributors with this special badge.

Note: Like the Arctic Code Vault badge, this is a historical achievement that cannot be earned now. You can learn more about which repositories were included on the GitHub Blog.

🧙 Open Sourcerer

Description: Awarded for making multiple contributions to different open-source repositories. This achievement celebrates your dedication to the open-source community and collaborative development.

Tiers:

• Bronze: Contributions to 2+ repositories
• Silver: Contributions to 16+ repositories
• Gold: Contributions to 64+ repositories

How to Earn:

1. Find open-source projects that interest you
2. Make meaningful contributions through:
   • Code submissions
   • Documentation improvements
   • Bug reports and fixes
   • Feature implementations
3. Ensure your contributions are accepted and merged

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Use GitHub's Explore page or sites like goodfirstissue.dev to find projects needing help
2. Read the project's CONTRIBUTING.md file to understand their contribution guidelines
3. Start with small contributions like fixing typos or improving documentation
4. As you gain confidence, tackle more complex issues
5. Make sure to contribute to different repositories, as the achievement counts unique repositories, not the number of contributions

Pro Tip: Join Hacktoberfest (October) or similar events to find welcoming repositories. Many projects tag issues specifically for new contributors during these events.

🔍 Public Sponsor

Description: Awarded for sponsoring open source work through GitHub Sponsors. This achievement recognizes your financial support of the open-source ecosystem.

How to Earn:

1. Visit a developer or organization's profile that has GitHub Sponsors enabled
2. Click the "Sponsor" button
3. Choose a sponsorship tier and complete the payment process
4. Your sponsorship must be public (not anonymous) to earn this achievement

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Find a developer or organization with the Sponsor button on their profile
2. Click the "Sponsor" button (usually appears as a heart icon)
3. Select a sponsorship tier - these typically range from $1 to $100+ per month
4. Complete the payment process using a credit card or PayPal
5. Make sure to keep the "Make this sponsorship private" option unchecked
6. After your sponsorship is processed, the achievement should appear on your profile

Pro Tip: Many popular open-source maintainers have GitHub Sponsors enabled. You can start with a small monthly contribution to support projects you use regularly. This not only earns you the achievement but also helps sustain the open-source community.

❤️ Heart On Your Sleeve

Description: Awarded for reacting to something on GitHub with a ❤️ emoji. This achievement celebrates your engagement and appreciation within the community.

How to Earn:

1. Find content on GitHub that you appreciate (issues, pull requests, discussions, comments)
2. React to it with the ❤️ (heart) emoji
3. That's it! The achievement should appear on your profile

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Browse through repositories, issues, pull requests, or discussions
2. When you find content you appreciate, look for the "Add reaction" button (usually a smiley face icon)
3. Select the ❤️ emoji from the reaction options
4. The achievement should be awarded to your profile shortly after

Pro Tip: This is one of the easiest achievements to earn. You can react to any content on GitHub, including README files, issues, pull requests, or comments.

👾 Codecrafter

Description: Awarded for creating and merging a pull request using GitHub Codespaces. This achievement recognizes your use of GitHub's cloud development environment.

How to Earn:

1. Find a repository where you want to contribute
2. Instead of cloning locally, click the "Code" button and select "Open with Codespaces"
3. Create a new branch and make your changes in the Codespaces environment
4. Commit your changes and create a pull request directly from Codespaces
5. Get your pull request merged

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Navigate to a repository on GitHub
2. Click the green "Code" button
3. Select the "Codespaces" tab
4. Click "Create codespace on main" (or the default branch)
5. Wait for the Codespace to load (it will open a VS Code-like environment in your browser)
6. Create a new branch in the Codespace
7. Make your changes to the code
8. Commit your changes and push them
9. Create a pull request from within the Codespace
10. Once your PR is merged, you'll earn the achievement

Pro Tip: GitHub Codespaces provides a full development environment in the cloud, making it easy to contribute to projects without setting up a local development environment. This is especially useful for quick edits or when working on a machine where you can't install development tools.

How to Display Your Achievements

GitHub achievements are displayed on your profile by default. To manage them:

1. Go to your GitHub profile
2. Click "Edit profile"
3. Scroll down to the "Achievements" section
4. Toggle which achievements you want to display publicly

Conclusion

GitHub achievements are a fun way to track your progress and contributions in the developer community. Whether you're a seasoned open-source contributor or just starting your coding journey, these badges provide motivation and recognition for your efforts.

Happy coding, and may your profile soon be filled with well-earned achievements!

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Last updated: May 26, 2025. GitHub may add or modify achievements over time. Check the official GitHub documentation for the most current information.