Cloning a repo is not a portfolio piece

This needs to be said plainly, because I see the mistake everywhere: cloning a repository to work on an issue does not make that repository yours. The clone on your laptop is a tool, not a credential. Confusing the two is how portfolios become fiction.

What actually counts as evidence

Merged pull requests. Your name on a merged PR in someone else's repository is the strongest, most verifiable evidence of contribution that exists.

Issues you filed that led to fixes. A well-researched issue linked from the fix is authorship of the diagnosis.

Discussed, decided, documented. Comments that shaped a decision in a project's tracker are contribution, even without a diff.

How to present it honestly

The framing that keeps you truthful: contribution is about the change; project is about the authorship. On my own site, Drips Wave appears under open source — as a contribution, with the actual issue and pull request linked — not as a product I built. The distinction costs nothing and buys everything: credibility.

The cloned repository taught you the codebase. The contribution proves what you did in it. Show the second thing. Never let a folder of clones dress up as experience.