Get started guides

Another useful document to include with your code is a get started guide. This document should guide the user through a basic task for your code, along with some accompanying text.

Get started guides can be as simple as a section in your README file, or single script in your main directory (perhaps called quick-start.py or getting_started.R), where you demonstrate your code, annotated with plenty of comments and text blocks to guide the reader.

When writing an R package, there is a tool for such demos: vignettes. We recommend including a get started vignette with your package to help orient new users.