A project’s README is the most-travelled document it owns, and out on GitHub, npm, or a plugin registry it has none of the site chrome — no header, no navigation, no footer tying it back to the mesh. So the README has to carry those links itself. The canonical machine copy of this standard, with the copy-paste block, is in the repository at hub/standards/readme.md.

The rule

Three worded link placements are required, around whatever content the README already has: a documentation link near the top (pointing at the project’s page on the shared domain), a grouped “Get it” section gathering every place the project is used, downloaded, or published — the live app, releases, and each store or registry it ships to, labelled and organized rather than dumped as raw URLs — and a fairyfox.io footer near the bottom that links back to the hub and states the project is part of the Fairy Fox mesh.

Why worded links, not just badges

Badges front the top of every README already, but a badge is an image: easy to skim past, and invisible in plain-text views and some registries. A worded, labelled link survives where a badge doesn’t, and it’s the thing a reader actually follows. The two are complementary — the badge is a glanceable signal, the link is the door. The docs link and the mesh footer apply to every project without exception; a store or deploy link is present whenever that destination exists, and omitting one that does exist takes a recorded exception rather than a silent drop. Complements README badges and the on-site docs-site chrome.