Build a Starred Repo Collection

Curate without losing projects

Stars are a personal library—but they vanish when creators delete repos or your account is rate limited. Gitea Mirror can automatically capture every starred repository into a dedicated Gitea organization, complete with issues and releases, so your inspiration lives on.

Requirements

Gitea Mirror up and running (Docker, LXC, or Helm)
GitHub PAT for the account whose stars you want mirrored
Destination Gitea with a personal organization ready (e.g. stars)
Optional: DNS entry for the mirror so friends can browse the collection

Step-by-step

1. Enable starred owner tracking

In the onboarding wizard—or later under Configuration → Connections—add your GitHub username as an owner.
Enable Mirror starred repositories and set the Starred repos organization to a dedicated space such as stars-jamie.
Use the starred content selector to choose whether you want full metadata (issues, releases, PRs, wiki) or the lightweight code-only mode.

2. Categorize the collection

Create sub-organizations in Gitea (e.g. stars-iot, stars-ai) if you want separate spaces you can curate manually.
Starred mirrors always land in the dedicated starred org, so use repository labels or Gitea teams to slice the collection by language, topic, or priority.
Tag repos in Gitea with labels like language:rust, topic:homelab for quick filtering.

Organization view in Gitea Mirror highlighting starred GitHub repositories grouped in a dedicated Gitea org. — Group starred GitHub repositories into curated Gitea organizations for easier browsing and long-term preservation.

3. Keep the collection fresh

Enable Automatic syncing in Configuration → Automation and pick an interval around 1h so new stars appear quickly.
Leave the scheduler running—auto-discovery pulls in new stars on each pass without additional configuration.
If you want unstarred projects archived or removed, enable Handle orphaned repositories automatically and choose Archive (recommended) or Delete for strict mirroring.

4. Showcase the library

Point a read-only Gitea user at the org so friends can browse without write access.
Host the Gitea instance behind a reverse proxy with HTTPS, then link it on your blog.
Export the repo list weekly and share it as a curated newsletter.

Verify the collection works

Star a new repo on GitHub.
Wait for the star interval or run Sync Repository from the dashboard for an immediate refresh.
Confirm the repo appears in your stars org with issues/releases intact.
Unstar it on GitHub; if cleanup is set to Archive, verify the mirror is renamed with an archived- prefix and marked read-only. If you chose Delete, confirm it disappears on the next sync.

Nice-to-haves

Add a README.md in the Gitea org homepage explaining your tagging rules.
Pair with Preserve GitHub History so you keep metadata, not just code.
Use the Helm deployment if you want the collection available inside your cluster.

FAQ

Can I mirror only the code or include metadata?

Yes. Use the starred content selector to choose code-only or include issues, releases, pull requests, and wikis.

What happens when I unstar a repository?

Enable Handle orphaned repositories automatically and choose Archive (recommended) to preserve history read-only, or Delete for a strict mirror.

Can others browse my collection safely?

Create a read-only Gitea user or org members with no write permissions, then share the organization URL behind HTTPS.