All Contributors Specification

aid: contributors-md:all-contributors-spec
name: All Contributors Specification
tags:
- Attribution
- Specification
- Standardization
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
humanURL: https://allcontributors.org/docs/en/specification
properties:
- url: https://allcontributors.org/docs/en/specification
  type: Specification
- url: https://allcontributors.org/docs/en/emoji-key
  type: Documentation
- url: https://github.com/all-contributors/all-contributors-cli
  type: Repository
- url: https://allcontributors.org/docs/en/cli/usage
  type: Documentation
description: The All Contributors specification defines a JSON schema (in .all-contributorsrc) plus a
  Markdown rendering convention that captures every contributor name, GitHub login, avatar URL, profile
  URL, and the list of contribution types using a defined emoji key. Tooling can regenerate the contributor
  table on demand and synchronize updates back into both .all-contributorsrc and CONTRIBUTORS.md or README.md.
x-features:
- Defines a contribution type emoji key with 30+ categories
- JSON config schema in .all-contributorsrc as machine readable source
- CLI plus GitHub bot for adding contributors with a comment command
- Backed by an OSS community since 2017
x-useCases:
- Standardizing contributor recognition across multiple projects
- Auditing contribution categories programmatically
- Generating contributor tables in README or CONTRIBUTORS files
- Recognizing accessibility, infrastructure, and security contributions