ghorg clone: Clone or Mirror a Whole Org

ghorg clone clones or pulls every repository in an organization or group in parallel.

For backups, org-wide scans, or bulk analysis, ghorg clone fetches all repos of a GitHub org or GitLab group at once, updating existing clones on re-run.

What it does

ghorg clone iterates the repositories of an org (GitHub) or group (GitLab), cloning missing ones and pulling existing ones in parallel. --backup makes bare mirror clones suitable for archival. It supports GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Gitea via --scm-type.

Common usage

Terminal

# clone all repos in a GitHub org with a token
ghorg clone my-org --token "$GH_PAT"
# GitLab group, bare backup mirror
ghorg clone my-group --scm-type gitlab --base-url https://gitlab.example.com \
  --token "$GLAB_PAT" --backup

Options

Flag	What it does
--token <token>	API token (or set GHORG_GITHUB_TOKEN etc.)
--scm-type <scm>	github, gitlab, bitbucket, or gitea
--base-url <url>	API base URL for self-hosted instances
--clone-type <t>	org or user
--backup	Bare mirror clone for archival
--concurrency <n>	Number of parallel clones
--clone-protocol <p>	https or ssh

In CI

Set the token via --token or the GHORG_*_TOKEN env var so it never prompts. Lower --concurrency if you hit rate limits. For self-hosted GitLab/Gitea always pass --base-url. Use --clone-protocol https with a token in CI rather than relying on SSH keys.

Common errors in CI

"Error: no GitHub token provided" (or the equivalent per SCM) means --token/env is unset. "403 API rate limit exceeded" means too many parallel requests; reduce --concurrency or use a token with higher limits. "404 Not Found" on a private org means the token lacks read scope. A wrong --base-url yields "no such host".