Getting Access

Payments go through Polar with automatic GitHub access grant. You don't enter a GitHub username at checkout — you connect your GitHub account afterwards from your Polar customer portal:

1. Pay on Polar (only email + payment — no GitHub details).
2. Open the Polar order email → click Access purchase to land in the Polar customer portal.
3. In Benefit Grants, click Connect GitHub account → authorize Polar via GitHub OAuth.
4. Polar automatically requests a repo invite for the GitHub account you just connected.
5. Accept the invite from polar-repository-invite-benefit[bot] in your GitHub email.

Average time from payment to code on your computer: under 5 minutes.

Step 1 — Pay on Polar

On the Polar checkout you only enter your email and payment details. You don't pick a GitHub account at this point — that happens after the order is confirmed, in your Polar customer portal.

Don't have a GitHub account yet? Sign up at github.com first — it's free and takes 30 seconds. You'll connect it in Step 2.

Step 2 — Connect your GitHub account in the Polar portal

Within a minute of successful payment you'll receive an order confirmation email from Polar. The actual repo access happens through the Polar customer portal that the email links to.

2.1 Open the Polar order email

Subject line looks like "Your DirectoryKit order confirmation". Sender: Directory Launch (via Polar). Click the blue Access purchase button to open your Polar customer portal.

2.2 Click "Connect GitHub account" in Benefit Grants

On the Polar dashboard you'll see a Benefit Grants card with a red note: "The customer needs to connect their GitHub account." Click Connect GitHub account.

2.3 Authorize Polar on GitHub

GitHub will ask you to authorize polar.sh by Polar. Polar only needs to verify your identity and read your email — it does not get push access to your code. Click Authorize.

2.4 Polar requests the repo invite for you

Once you authorize, Polar grants you the benefit and the same Benefit Grants row now shows a Go to repo link and a Request new invite button. The invite email usually arrives within a minute. If it doesn't, click Request new invite.

2.5 Accept the GitHub invitation

GitHub sends an email from polar-repository-invite-benefit[bot] titled "invited you to collaborate on …". Click through and press the green Accept invitation button.

Once accepted, the private repo appears in your GitHub account and you can proceed to the next step.

Step 3 — Pick how to get the code

You have two ways to get the code on your computer. Pick whichever matches how you work.

Option A — Clone + push to a new repo

Best for: anyone who wants a fully independent private repo with full Git history, plus the ability to pull future boilerplate updates.

# 1. Clone the private repo locally
git clone https://github.com/seller/directorykit.git my-directory
cd my-directory
 
# 2. Create a new empty private repo on your GitHub (via the UI),
#    e.g. github.com/you/my-directory — DON'T initialize with README
 
# 3. Point origin at your new repo and push
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/you/my-directory.git
git push -u origin main

What you get:

• Full git history preserved
• Your own private repo with no visible ties to the seller
• A clean upstream remote so you can pull future boilerplate updates

Pulling future updates:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/seller/directorykit.git
git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/main

Option B — Download ZIP

Best for: "I don't want to touch the terminal / Git CLI."

1. Click Code (green button, top-right of the file list)
2. Choose Download ZIP at the bottom of the dropdown
3. Unzip anywhere

What you get:

• All source files at the time of download — no Git CLI needed after that
• Fewest total steps after accepting the invite

Limitations:

• No git history — the download is a snapshot
• No automatic updates — to get new boilerplate versions, you re-download the ZIP and diff manually
• Vercel deploy won't work directly — Vercel needs a Git repo to import from. You'll need to git init, create a repo on GitHub, and push before deploying

Comparison at a glance

Both options require a GitHub account and an accepted invitation (Step 2) — the repo is private, so there's no way around that. The real differentiator is what you do after that.

Which one should you pick?

• «I want my own private repo with Git history and future updates» → Clone + new repo (Option A)
• «I don't want to use Git CLI / terminal» → Download ZIP (Option B) — but know that you'll need a Git repo when you're ready to deploy to Vercel

After you have the code

Head to Installation — you'll run pnpm install and get the site on localhost:3000 in about 10 minutes.

Troubleshooting

"I paid but didn't get the Polar order email"

1. Check spam / promotions folder — the Polar email is sent from notifications.polar.sh, which some filters flag.
2. Still nothing after 10 minutes? Contact the seller with your Polar order ID — they can resend the order email or confirm the payment cleared.

"I connected GitHub in the Polar portal but the invite didn't arrive"

1. Wait about a minute — GitHub invite delivery can lag a few seconds behind the OAuth callback.
2. Click "Request new invite" in the Polar portal Benefit Grants card. This re-triggers the grant.
3. Check spam / promotions — GitHub sends from noreply@github.com.
4. Check you connected the right GitHub account. The OAuth screen showed the username being authorized (e.g. "Verify your GitHub identity (yourname)"). If you authorized the wrong account, revoke Polar in GitHub → Settings → Applications → Authorized OAuth Apps, then reconnect the correct account from the Polar portal.
5. Check your GitHub notifications directly at github.com/notifications — pending repository invitations show up there too.

Merge conflicts when pulling upstream updates

When you've customized config/*.config.ts and the upstream updates those same files, Git can't auto-merge. Resolve them like any other merge conflict:

git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/main
# resolve conflicts in your editor, then:
git add .
git commit
git push

Once you have the code and the installation is done, you rarely need to sync upstream — boilerplate updates are optional. Only pull when the seller announces a meaningful release.