# What is shipping?

Written by [Alex Ren](https://github.com/qcoral/) for [hwdocs.hackclub.dev](https://hwdocs.hackclub.dev)


Shipping! You’ve probably seen this term thrown around a good amount. What does it mean? How do I ship my project?

In short, **shipping is the process of actually making your project shareable**. It’s _the_ most important part of your project, almost as important as the entire project itself

When you first make something, usually it just lives as a file on your computer. This is bad because only YOU can access it! Nobody else can see it.

Not only that, but when you look back at the project a few years from now it’ll be very, _very_ difficult to remember anything about it! _It’s not real_

Shipping (at least in this context) involves publishing your design out there for the world to see. Making it very real. This involves a couple steps:

- **Documenting what your project actually is:**
    - A quick story/motivation on how the project came to be
    - A description of what the project does
    - A quick brief on how it all fits together
    - Some pictures of the design
- **Making all files & resources easily accessible & organized**
- **Putting it on a platform that’s easily shareable (e.g. GitHub, Printables, etc.)**

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## Examples

Here are some great examples of shipped projects! Notice how the files are organized using folders, and, more importantly, it’s well documented what the project is about and what you can do with it!

_Fun fact: some of these were made by other Hack Clubbers!_

**Keyboards & Macropads:**

- [The biblically accurate keyboard](https://github.com/geg-tech/biblicallyaccuratekeyboard)
- [CYBERPAD-01](https://github.com/KaiPereira/CYBERPAD-01)

**3D printers:**

- [Breaky Belt](https://github.com/WilliamPrime/breaky-belt)
- [The VORON 0](https://github.com/VoronDesign/Voron-0) (non-Hack Club)

**Misc projects:**

- [AngstromIO](https://github.com/Dieu-de-l-elec/AngstromIO-devboard)
- [PiGRRL](https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-PiGRRL-PCB) Game console (non-Hack Club)

When you make your repository nothing but a dump of files and 2 sentences for a README, what happens is that it’s hard for other people to recognize your work, nor does it make it easy to learn from. _It’s not real_. It only lives on in your tiny corner of this earth.