A hands-on reference for GitHub profile achievements, verified against a live account with the gh CLI. Everything documented here was exercised for real — no recycled listicles.
Most achievement guides copy each other and drift out of date. This one starts from what actually unlocked badges on a live account, and grows as each requirement gets re-tested.
| Achievement | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Pull Shark | Opened a pull request that was merged |
| Pair Extraordinaire | Co-authored commits on a merged pull request |
| Quickdraw | Closed an issue or PR within 5 minutes of opening it |
| YOLO | Merged a pull request with zero reviews |
| Galaxy Brain | Had your answer accepted in a Q&A discussion |
| Starstruck | Created a repository that earned 16 stars |
| Public Sponsor | Publicly sponsored an open source contributor |
Tier thresholds, retired achievements, and per-badge practical notes are in review.
Four achievements have bronze, silver and gold tiers on top of the default badge:
| Achievement | Default | Bronze | Silver | Gold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pull Shark | 2 merged PRs | 16 | 128 | 1024 |
| Pair Extraordinaire | 1 co-authored merged PR | 10 | 24 | 48 |
| Galaxy Brain | 2 accepted answers | 8 | 16 | 32 |
| Starstruck | 16 stars | 128 | 512 | 4096 |
Not worth chasing — these can no longer be unlocked:
- Arctic Code Vault Contributor — required contributing to a repo snapshotted by the 2020 Archive Program
- Mars 2020 Contributor — required contributing to code used by the Ingenuity helicopter mission
- Heart On Your Sleeve — stuck in testing, currently unearnable
- Open Sourcerer — stuck in testing, currently unearnable
- Quickdraw: open an issue and close it within 5 minutes. Works on any repo where you can close issues.
- YOLO: merge your own PR with zero reviews. Personal repos without branch protection allow this by default.
- Pair Extraordinaire: add a
Co-authored-by: Name <email>trailer after a blank line in the commit message. The email must resolve to a GitHub account. - Galaxy Brain: answers in a Q&A discussion can be marked as the accepted answer; the badge counts accepted answers, not upvotes.
- Profile highlights are not achievements:
Procomes with a paid plan or the Student Developer Pack;Developer Program Membercomes from registering an integration at github.com/developer/register. They render next to achievements but are earned differently.