Clone existing repo into new project folder (e.g., my-proj ). git clone https://github.com/ishara/my-proj my-proj cd my-proj Delete everything "git-like" by deleting the .git folder. rm -rf .git Create a new git repo You can writing code now. If you'd rather preserve your work under source control, consider taking the following steps. Initialize this project as a local git repo and make the first commit: git init git add . git commit -m "Initial commit" Create a remote repository for your project ( https://github.com/new ). Get its address (e.g. https://github.com/ <my- org>/my-proj.git ) and push the local repo to the remote . git remote add origin < repo-address > git push -u origin master