How to Generate a GitHub Token for Pushing Repos with Greening
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How to Generate a GitHub Token for Pushing Repos with Greening

Publish Date: Apr 7
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When using greening new to auto-create and push a repo to GitHub, you'll need a GitHub token with proper permissions. This token allows Greening to authenticate with the GitHub API on your behalf and create new repositories for your projects.

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Here’s how to generate one and use it securely:

🔐 Step 1: Generate a New Token

  1. Visit github.com/settings/tokens
  2. Click "Generate new token"
  3. Use the following settings:
    • Note: Greening CLI access
    • Expiration: Choose one (90 days or custom)
    • Scopes: Check the box for:
      • repo (Full control of private repositories)
  4. Click "Generate token" and copy it immediately.

🧠 Step 2: Add It to Your Environment

For security, never hard-code your token into your project.

Instead, add it to your environment using one of the following:

Unix/macOS 

export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_token_here
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You can also add this to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or ~/.bash_profile.

Windows (Command Prompt) 

set GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_token_here
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Windows (PowerShell) 

$env:GITHUB_TOKEN = "ghp_your_token_here"
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✅ Step 3: Use It with Greening

Now that your token is available, Greening will detect it automatically.

Just run:

greening new
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If you have create_github_repo: true in your greening.yaml config, Greening will:

  • Create a new GitHub repo
  • Add the remote
  • Push your project

No extra steps. ✨

🧼 Bonus: Keeping Your Token Safe

  • Don’t commit .env files or shell profiles to public repos.
  • Rotate your token periodically, especially if it becomes exposed.
  • Use fine-grained tokens for more control (GitHub now supports these).

Greening aims to make shipping your ideas painless — and this is a big part of that. By setting up your token once, you’ll unlock powerful automation across every new project.

Happy shipping 🌱

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greening is an opinionated, lightweight project automation tool for solo developers and creative coders. With just a few commands, you can scaffold a production-ready Python package — complete with docs, tests, GitHub Actions workflows, PyPI packaging, and an auto-deployed GitHub Pages site. No boilerplate. No setup hell. Just instant polish.

🌱 Greening

greening is an opinionated, full-stack project automation tool for solo developers and creative coders.

With just a few commands, you can scaffold a production-ready Python package — complete with docs, tests, GitHub Actions workflows, PyPI packaging, and an auto-deployed GitHub Pages site No boilerplate. No setup hell. Just instant polish.

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🍃 Why greening?

Most devs never ship their tools — not because the code isn’t good, but because the surrounding friction is too high:

  • How do I structure the project?
  • How do I set up CI/CD, tests, and linting?
  • How do I make it look legit?
  • How do I talk about it?

greening answers all of that in one opinionated workflow.

User typing in commands greening init, greening new, and greening deploy and rapidly deploying a project

🌿 Key features

greening automates your project creation pipeline:

✅ greening init…


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