Sync a Private Repo Subfolder to a Public Repo Using GitHub Actions 🔄🚀

While building my website 🌐, I ran into an architecture constraint 🧠.

My entire repository needed to stay private 🔒 because it contains drafts and internal structure. However, one folder (/website) powers the basic version of my blog and had to be public 🌍.

I didn’t want:

Duplicate repositories 📂

Manual copying ❌

Risk of exposing private files 🚫

Inconsistent content between repos 🔁

⚙️ The Solution

I implemented a GitHub Actions workflow 🤖 inside the private repository that:

Triggers only on website/** changes 📁

Uses a Personal Access Token (PAT) stored as a secret 🔑

Clones the public repository 🌐

Syncs using rsync --delete 🪞

Commits and pushes automatically 🚀

The --delete flag ensures removed files are also mirrored, keeping both repositories perfectly in sync 🔄.

🏗️ Final Setup

Private repo → Full development workspace 🧑‍💻
Public repo → Clean blog content layer 📦
Publishing → Fully automated pipeline ⚡

This approach keeps a single source of truth 📌 while maintaining proper separation of concerns 🧩.

If you're facing similar repo separation challenges, this pattern works cleanly and reliably.

Full step-by-step guide 🔗
https://vineelvanjari.com/blog/sync-private-repo-subfolder-to-public-repo-using-github-actions