As far as I can tell the only way to clone a given upstream repo, which has an unknown main branch name without any tags is: git clone --single-branch <url> <repo> && cd <repo> && git tag -d $(git tag -l) && git config remote.origin.tagOpt --no-tags Is there really nothing like: git clone --single-branch --no-tags <url> <repo> ? I suppose this can be done with the usual 'git init`, set the config & then fetch dance, but in that case what part of 'git remote' or friends exposes finding the remote "main" ref as --single-branch does?