Onboarding Guides
Good onboarding reduces time-to-first-PR and time-to-first-decision. Short paths, owned checklists, and links to living systems — not a novel.
Structure
# Onboarding: <role or project>
## Day 0 access
- accounts, VPN, repos, secrets path
## First 48 hours
- setup script / dev environment
- run tests / app locally
- map of systems
## First week
- small good first issue / task
- who to ask (roles not only names if churny)
- rituals (standup, oncall, release)
## How we work
- code review norms, communication channels
## Glossary
…
## Checklist
- [ ] …
Rules
- Prefer commands that work copy-paste; mark OS differences.
- Link canonical docs; do not duplicate policies that drift.
- Separate employee onboarding from open-source contributor guides when needed.
- Security: never embed real secrets; describe where to obtain them.
- Include a "you are onboarded when…" definition.
- Keep under a readable length; progressive disclosure for deep topics.
Edge cases
- Remote / distributed: timezone and async norms.
- Contractors: access boundaries.
- OSS: CONTRIBUTING, DCO/CLA, issue labels.