git-digest

Single-binary Go tool that turns your GitHub commit activity into a daily dev-journal digest — AI-written, or fully deterministic and offline with -static.

It fetches your recent commits and renders a structured markdown digest: either an LLM writes a retrospective developer-journal entry from a grounded prompt, or the built-in deterministic pipeline classifies and scores the commits itself with no model in the loop. Either way, it saves the digest locally and (optionally) serves it in a clean dark-mode web UI.

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What it does

1. Fetches your GitHub repos filtered by recent push activity
2. Pulls your commits from the last N days (with optional file diffs)
3. Renders a structured markdown digest (summary + per-repo breakdown) — either an LLM writes it from a grounded prompt, or -static builds it deterministically with no model at all
4. Saves the digest locally
5. Optionally:
   • Serves all digests via a built-in dark-mode web UI
   • Copies the digest into a "portfolio" repo's digests/ folder

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LLM backend (cloud-optional)

git-digest needs something to write the prose. You pick:

• Claude Code CLI (default) — convenient, but uses Anthropic's cloud models. Requires the claude CLI installed and authenticated.
• Your own LLM gateway — point it at any OpenAI /v1/chat/completions-compatible endpoint (local llama.cpp, Ollama proxy, self-hosted server, etc.) with --gateway. Fully offline if your gateway is.
• No LLM at all — -static runs the built-in deterministic template pipeline (classify commits, parse hunks, score importance, render markdown). No API, no model, no hallucinations — every line traces to a commit fact.

There's no built-in API-key path — it's the CLI, your own endpoint, or -static.

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Setup

First run with no config launches an interactive walkthrough. You can re-run it anytime:

./git-digest --settings

It asks, one question at a time, for your GitHub token, LLM backend, model, repos to ignore, private-repo preference, portfolio path, and output directory — then writes ~/.config/git-digest/env. Every answer also has a plain environment-variable equivalent (below) if you'd rather skip the wizard.

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Usage

./git-digest [flags]

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
-lookback	1	Days to look back for activity
-private	env	Include private repositories
-serve	false	Start web UI at http://localhost:4242 after generating
-push	false	Copy digest into the portfolio repo's digests/ folder
-gateway	false	Use your LLM gateway instead of the Claude CLI
-static	false	Skip the LLM entirely, render with the deterministic static-digest pipeline
-settings	false	Run the interactive setup and exit
-no-patches	false	Skip file diffs in sparse commits
-no-prev	false	Don't include the previous digest as a style reference
-no-repeat	false	Exclude commit SHAs already covered by prior digests
-personality	""	Override the tone/voice of the digest
-note	""	Manual note to fold in (e.g. private/offline work)

Environment variables

All are optional except GITHUB_TOKEN, and all can be set by the wizard.

Variable	Description
GITHUB_TOKEN	GitHub personal access token (repo scope) — required
GIT_DIGEST_BACKEND	claude, gateway, or both (default claude)
GIT_DIGEST_GATEWAY_URL	Base URL of your OpenAI-compatible gateway (e.g. http://localhost:7860)
GIT_DIGEST_MODEL	Model name (default claude-haiku-4-5-20251001)
GIT_DIGEST_IGNORE	Comma-separated repos to skip (default none)
GIT_DIGEST_PRIVATE	true to include private repos by default
GIT_DIGEST_PORTFOLIO	Local path to a portfolio repo for -push
GIT_DIGEST_OUTPUT	Where digests are saved (default ~/digests)

Set these in your shell, or let the wizard write them to ~/.config/git-digest/env (loaded automatically, shell env takes precedence).

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Install & build

Requires Go 1.21+:

git clone https://github.com/usr-wwelsh/git-digest
cd git-digest
go build

Binary is created at ./git-digest. No third-party Go dependencies.

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Web UI

Running with -serve starts an HTTP server on port 4242 with:

• Index page listing all generated digests with previews
• Individual digest view with rendered markdown
• GitHub-style dark theme, zero client-side JavaScript

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License

MIT — Copyright 2026 William Welsh