Package it so it runs

Every submission has to be something a reviewer can open and use. For a website that's a live link. For a self-hosted project which most CloudFALL projects are it's a public repo and a Docker container, so the reviewer can start it on their own machine. Minor expections for things like homelabs with extensions, things like custom UPS, antenna, etc

The minimum#

A person who has never seen your project should be able to do this:

git clone https://github.com/you/your-project
cd your-project
cp .env.example .env      # if you need config at all
docker compose up -d
# open http://localhost:PORT

If your README's setup section is longer than a screen, that's may be a bad sign.

A Dockerfile that works from a clean clone#

FROM node:22-alpine
WORKDIR /app
 
# Dependencies first: this layer is cached until your lockfile changes.
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --omit=dev
 
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]

services:
  app:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      # Sensible defaults, so `docker compose up` works with no .env at all.
      DATA_DIR: /data
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped

Then verify it the way a reviewer will from a fresh clone, in a directory you haven't been developing in:

git clone https://github.com/you/your-project /tmp/clean-check
cd /tmp/clean-check && docker compose up --build

That catches the file you never committed, which is the single most common reason a project comes back.

The README a reviewer wants#

• One sentence on what it replaces. "Self-hosted replacement for Strava's paid tier" tells a reviewer more than three paragraphs of feature list.
• Screenshots. At least one of the actual UI. Required, not decoration.
• Setup. The four commands above, exactly as they work.
• A licence. MIT, Apache-2.0 or similar. Without one, nobody can legally use it, and "open source" hasn't happened.

Hosted, not self-hosted?#

If your project is a website with a live URL, that URL is your "it runs" but still ship the repo and keep it public.