You can create a GitHub repo via the command line using the GitHub API. Check out the repository API. If you scroll down about a third of the way, you'll see a section entitled "Create" that explains how to create a repo via the API (right above that is a section that explains how to fork a repo with the API, too). Obviously you can't use git
to do this, but you can do it via the command line with a tool like curl
.
Outside of the API, there's no way to create a repo on GitHub via the command line. As you noted, GitHub doesn't allow shell access, etc., so aside from the GitHub API, the only way to create a repo is through GitHub's web interface.