CommitGremlin

Most of the work I do isn't on Github because I sometimes touch grass or have a girlfriend (she's goes to a different school you don't know her shut up). All I know is I'm tired of my Github looking dead but I really don't like the idea of blank commits..SO~ CommitGremlin watches your dev folders, tracks how long you actually worked, and pushes one commit a day to a public activity repo. Green squares go brrrrrr

ETA: Now that I think about it, you could point this at your profile readme instead of creating a new repo. I will eventually add a little bling to the reeadme if/when I can get to it~ seph

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What it does

• Watches configured folders with Watchdog and logs every file change
• Tracks cumulative active time — not wall clock. If you step away for 30 minutes, that gap doesn't count. Come back and a new session opens. At commit time it sums all the sessions for the day.
• Logs daily activity to data/logs/ (JSON + Markdown). Stays local.
• At 23:00 (configurable), updates a README in your public activity repo and pushes one commit:

activity 2025-06-14 | active: 6h 23m 10s | files: 47 | builds: 3

That's it. Your code stays wherever your code lives.

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Install

Python 3.8+ and Git required.

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/commit-gremlin
cd commit-gremlin
pip install .

This drops a commit-gremlin command on your PATH.

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Getting it talking to GitHub

You need a public repo for the activity and a way to push to it without a password prompt since the daemon runs unattended.

1. Create the activity repo

New public repo on GitHub — dev-activity, commit-activity, whatever. Initialize it with a README so there's something to push onto.

2. SSH setup (recommended)

If you don't have a key yet:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your@email.com"

Add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub to GitHub → Settings → SSH and GPG keys.

Test it:

ssh -T git@github.com
# Hi YOUR_USERNAME! You've successfully authenticated...

3. Clone the activity repo with the SSH URL

git clone git@github.com:YOUR_USERNAME/dev-activity C:/dev/github-activity-activity

Point activity_repo in config.json at that path and you're done.

Already on Windows with GitHub Desktop or VS Code?

Git Credential Manager is probably already handling auth for you. Just try a manual push from the activity repo folder — if it goes through without asking for a password, skip everything above.

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Configuration

config.json next to the package, or point at it anywhere with COMMITGREMLIN_CONFIG:

{
  "watch_folders": [
    "C:/dev/MyProject1",
    "C:/dev/MyProject2"
  ],
  "activity_repo": "C:/dev/github-activity-activity",
  "commit_hour": 23,
  "session_timeout_seconds": 1800,
  "ignored_patterns": ["*.pyc", "__pycache__", ".git", "node_modules", "*.log"]
}

Key	Default	Notes
watch_folders	required	Absolute or relative to the config file
activity_repo	required	Local clone of your public activity repo
commit_hour	23	0–23, when the daily commit fires
session_timeout_seconds	1800	Gap length that ends a session
ignored_patterns	[]	Glob patterns, same syntax as .gitignore

Paths work on Windows and Linux as-is.

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Usage

# Start the daemon
commit-gremlin start

# Tell it you ran a build (call this from your build script)
commit-gremlin build
commit-gremlin build -n 3

# Check cumulative stats
commit-gremlin stats

# Force a commit
commit-gremlin commit

Hooking into your build process

build:
	gcc -o myapp src/*.c
	commit-gremlin build

msbuild MyProject.sln
commit-gremlin build

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Autostart

Windows — Task Scheduler

Create a basic task, trigger on log on, action runs commit-gremlin start. If you're on a laptop uncheck "only run on AC power" or it'll silently do nothing on battery.

Linux — systemd user service

~/.config/systemd/user/commitgremlin.service:

[Unit]
Description=CommitGremlin

[Service]
ExecStart=commit-gremlin start
Environment=COMMITGREMLIN_CONFIG=%h/.config/commitgremlin/config.json
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

systemctl --user enable --now commitgremlin

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Data layout

data/
  stats.json        ← running totals
  builds.json       ← today's build count
  logs/
    2025-06-14.json
    2025-06-14.md

Only the activity repo README leaves your machine.

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Tests

pip install -e .[dev]
pytest tests/

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License

MIT