devlog

AI-powered developer journal that transforms your git history into meaningful narratives using GitHub Copilot CLI.

devlog reads your git commits and uses GitHub Copilot CLI to generate human-readable developer journals, standup reports, weekly recaps, and release notes — all from your terminal.

Demo

AI-powered daily journal from your git history

Standup report — Copilot CLI reads your source code and finds real blockers

Why devlog?

Developers write commit messages, but rarely take time to reflect on what they actually accomplished. devlog bridges that gap by turning raw git history into:

• Daily journals — What did I actually do today?
• Standup reports — Ready-to-share yesterday/today/blockers format
• Weekly recaps — High-level view of your week's progress
• Release notes — Auto-categorized changelogs from tags
• Custom recaps — Summarize any commit range

All powered by GitHub Copilot CLI for intelligent, context-aware summaries.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• Git
• GitHub CLI with Copilot extension

Install GitHub Copilot CLI

# Install GitHub CLI if you haven't
brew install gh  # macOS
# or: sudo apt install gh  # Ubuntu/Debian

# Authenticate
gh auth login

# Install Copilot CLI extension
gh extension install github/gh-copilot

Install devlog

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Garinmckayl/devlog-cli.git
cd devlog

# Install dependencies and build
npm install
npm run build

# Link globally (optional)
npm link

Usage

Run devlog from any git repository:

Daily Summary

devlog today

Summarizes all commits from today with an AI-generated narrative.

Standup Report

devlog standup

Generates a standup-ready report with yesterday's work, today's progress, and potential blockers.

Weekly Recap

devlog week

Provides a weekly overview grouped by day with AI highlights.

Release Notes

devlog release

Generates categorized release notes from all commits since the last git tag.

Custom Range Recap

devlog recap HEAD~10..HEAD
devlog recap abc123..def456

Summarizes any arbitrary commit range.

Check Status

devlog status

Verifies your setup: git repo, branch, author, and Copilot CLI availability.

Initialize Config

devlog init

Creates a .devlogrc configuration file in your project.

Options

All commands support these flags:

Flag	Description
-o, --output <file>	Save output as a Markdown file
--json	Output structured JSON
--no-ai	Skip AI summarization (show raw commits only)

Examples

# Save today's journal as markdown
devlog today -o journal.md

# Get JSON output for automation
devlog week --json > weekly-report.json

# Quick commit list without AI
devlog today --no-ai

Configuration

Create a .devlogrc file in your project root or home directory:

{
  "format": "terminal",
  "useCopilot": true,
  "showFiles": true,
  "showStats": true,
  "maxCommits": 100
}

Generate a starter config with:

devlog init

How It Works

1. Git Parsing — devlog reads your git log, extracting commits, diffs, and file changes using simple-git
2. Copilot CLI Integration — Commit data is formatted into natural language prompts and sent to gh copilot explain for AI-powered summarization
3. Smart Categorization — Copilot CLI categorizes commits into features, fixes, refactors, docs, etc.
4. Beautiful Output — Results are rendered with rich terminal formatting using chalk and boxen
5. Export — Optionally save as Markdown files or JSON for integration with other tools

Copilot CLI Integration Details

devlog uses GitHub Copilot CLI in several ways:

• gh copilot explain — Generates natural language summaries from commit data
• Commit categorization — AI-powered classification of commit types
• Standup generation — Intelligent yesterday/today/blockers formatting
• Release note authoring — Categorized changelogs with context-aware descriptions

When Copilot CLI is not available, devlog falls back to local keyword-based summarization.

Tech Stack

• TypeScript — Type-safe codebase
• Commander.js — CLI argument parsing
• simple-git — Git log parsing
• chalk + boxen — Terminal UI
• ora — Loading spinners
• date-fns — Date manipulation
• GitHub Copilot CLI — AI-powered summarization

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Built with GitHub Copilot CLI

This project was built as part of the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge on DEV Community. GitHub Copilot CLI was used extensively throughout the development process for code generation, debugging, and the core AI summarization features.