Contributor Recognition

Relevant source files

• .all-contributorsrc
• CONTRIBUTORS.md

This page documents how the Nerd Fonts project records and displays contributor recognition: the tooling used, the configuration schema, the contribution type taxonomy, and the procedure for updating the contributor list. For information on the development workflow and CI/CD pipeline that contributors interact with, see 6.3. For guidance on submitting contributions such as new fonts or bug reports, see 6.1 and 6.2.

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Overview

Nerd Fonts uses the all-contributors specification to acknowledge contributions of all kinds — not only code. The system consists of two files:

File	Role
.all-contributorsrc	Machine-readable configuration and contributor registry
CONTRIBUTORS.md	Human-readable rendered output; auto-generated from .all-contributorsrc

CONTRIBUTORS.md is not manually edited. Its content between the sentinel comments <!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-LIST:START --> and <!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-LIST:END --> is regenerated by the all-contributors CLI whenever the registry is updated.

Sources: CONTRIBUTORS.md1-10 .all-contributorsrc1-10

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.all-contributorsrc Configuration Schema

The .all-contributorsrc file is a JSON document at the repository root. It contains both project-level settings and the full contributor registry.

Top-Level Fields

Field	Value	Description
projectName	"nerd-fonts"	Repository name used when generating links
projectOwner	"ryanoasis"	GitHub organization or user that owns the repo
files	["CONTRIBUTORS.md"]	Files that the CLI will update
imageSize	100	Avatar image width in pixels
commit	false	Whether the CLI auto-commits after updating
repoType	"github"	Version control host type
repoHost	"https://github.com"	Base URL for profile and commit links
skipCi	false	Whether to append [skip ci] to generated commits
contributorsPerLine	7	Number of contributor cards per table row in CONTRIBUTORS.md
commitConvention	"angular"	Commit message format used when commit is true
commitType	"docs"	Angular commit type prefix used for generated commits

Sources: .all-contributorsrc1-24

Contributor Object Schema

Each entry in the contributors array has the following shape:

{
  "login":        "<GitHub username>",
  "name":         "<Display name>",
  "avatar_url":   "<GitHub avatar URL>",
  "profile":      "<URL to personal site or GitHub profile>",
  "contributions": ["<type>", ...]
}

Contributor Object Data Flow Diagram

Sources: .all-contributorsrc9-2017 CONTRIBUTORS.md8-303

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Contribution Type Taxonomy

The contributions array on each contributor object is a list of one or more type strings. Each type maps to an emoji displayed in CONTRIBUTORS.md.

Type key	Emoji	Meaning	Example in .all-contributorsrc
code	💻	Source code commits	Most contributors
doc	📖	Documentation updates	"doc"
design	🎨	Visual design work	ryanoasis, Grazfather
review	👀	Pull request reviews	sharkusk, ryanoasis
bug	🐛	Bug reports	chrissimpkins, Fxzzi
ideas	🤔	Ideas, planning, and feedback	chrissimpkins, delphinus
translation	🌍	Translated content	magauran, pgrimaud
infra	🚇	Infrastructure (hosting, build tools)	b-
maintenance	🚧	Repository maintenance	mdsanima, pgoslatara
tool	🔧	Tools and utilities	loichyan, jpawlowski
a11y	♿️	Accessibility improvements	kazerniel

Sources: .all-contributorsrc15-2016 CONTRIBUTORS.md14-297

Contribution Type to Contributor Object Mapping

Sources: .all-contributorsrc9-2017

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How CONTRIBUTORS.md Is Structured

CONTRIBUTORS.md is an HTML-in-Markdown file. The all-contributors CLI writes a <table> block inside the sentinel comment pair:

<!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-LIST:START - Do not remove or modify this section -->
<!-- prettier-ignore-start -->
<!-- markdownlint-disable -->
<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td align="center" valign="top" width="14.28%">
        <!-- contributor card: avatar, name, contribution emoji links -->
      </td>
      ...
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<!-- markdownlint-restore -->
<!-- prettier-ignore-end -->
<!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-LIST:END -->

Each contributor card contains:

• A linked avatar image (100 px wide, sourced from avatar_url)
• The contributor's display name
• A series of emoji links, each pointing to their commits, issues, or pull requests filtered by their GitHub login

The contributorsPerLine setting in .all-contributorsrc (currently 7) controls how many <td> elements appear per <tr>.

Sources: CONTRIBUTORS.md8-303 .all-contributorsrc21

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Updating the Contributor List

The all-contributors CLI (all-contributors-cli npm package) reads .all-contributorsrc and rewrites the sentinel block in CONTRIBUTORS.md. The configuration sets "commit": false, so the CLI does not auto-commit; the contributor must stage and commit changes manually.

Update Process Diagram

Steps to Add a Contributor

1. Install the CLI: npm install -g all-contributors-cli
2. Run: all-contributors add <github-login> <contribution-type>[,<type2>...]
   • Example: all-contributors add ryanoasis code,doc,design,review
3. The CLI appends or updates an entry in the contributors array in .all-contributorsrc.
4. The CLI rewrites the sentinel section in CONTRIBUTORS.md.
5. Commit both files together.

The commitConvention is set to "angular" and commitType to "docs", so if auto-commit were enabled, the generated message would follow the pattern docs: update contributors.

Sources: .all-contributorsrc1-24 CONTRIBUTORS.md305

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Registry Statistics

As of the current state of .all-contributorsrc, the project recognizes contributors across all contribution types. The table below summarizes the distribution of contribution types:

Contribution Type	Approximate Count of Contributors
code	~120
doc	~60
translation	~15
bug	~30
review	~8
ideas	~5
maintenance	~3
infra	~1
tool	~2
design	~2
a11y	~1

Note: individual contributors may have multiple types listed; counts above reflect the number of contributor entries that include each type, not unique people.

Sources: .all-contributorsrc9-2017