📓 commit-chronicle

Find your commits and pull requests across all your repos for a date range, pick what matters in an interactive terminal UI, and export a clean worklog (Markdown or JSON).

A single self-contained binary — no node, python, fzf, or gum to install. The only requirement is git; gh (optional) unlocks PR & review discovery.

range  →  PICK (fuzzy filter + multi-select + live preview)  →  EDIT  →  EXPORT

For a window you choose, it gathers everything you did:

• commits from git history (matched by author, across all branches)
• commits on pull requests you authored
• pull requests you authored
• pull requests you reviewed

…deduped into one tagged picker (commit / PR / review).

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Install

macOS users: prefer Option 1 or 2 — building locally is never blocked by Gatekeeper. The pre-built release binaries (Option 3) are not Apple-notarized, so macOS will quarantine a downloaded copy and warn it "cannot be opened" / "is malware"; clearing that takes one command (shown below).

Option 1 — go install (needs Go 1.25+)

go install github.com/ashishxcode/commit-chronicle/cmd/commit-chronicle@latest

This drops the commit-chronicle binary in $(go env GOPATH)/bin (usually ~/go/bin). Make sure that's on your PATH:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/go/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc   # or ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL

Option 2 — build from source

git clone https://github.com/ashishxcode/commit-chronicle
cd commit-chronicle
make install          # builds + installs to ~/go/bin
# or: make build      # just produces ./bin/commit-chronicle

Option 3 — download a release binary

Grab the binary for your OS/arch from the Releases page, then:

chmod +x commit-chronicle-*                          # macOS/Linux
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine commit-chronicle-* 2>/dev/null || true  # macOS only
mv commit-chronicle-* /usr/local/bin/commit-chronicle

The xattr line clears the Gatekeeper quarantine flag macOS adds to anything downloaded from the internet — without it you'll get a "cannot be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software" / malware warning, because the binaries aren't notarized. (You can also right-click the binary in Finder → Open the first time.) If you'd rather avoid this entirely, install with go install (Option 1), which compiles on your machine and is never quarantined.

Maintainers can produce all platform binaries with make release (output in dist/).

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Quick start

commit-chronicle

On the first run with no repos configured, it walks you through a one-time setup: it scans the usual places (~/projects, ~/work, ~/code, the current folder, …), shows how many git repos each holds, lets you pick one, and offers to remember it. It also checks whether gh is authenticated so PRs and reviews can be included.

After that, just run commit-chronicle from anywhere:

commit-chronicle                       # pick range → pick items → edit → export
commit-chronicle --since "7 days ago"
commit-chronicle --date today --copy   # also: yesterday, "3 days ago", etc.

Re-run setup any time with commit-chronicle --setup.

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Usage

Run it inside a git repo, or configure repos/roots (below) to scan many at once:

commit-chronicle                       # interactive: pick range → pick items → edit → export
commit-chronicle --since "7 days ago"
commit-chronicle --month 2026-05 --copy
commit-chronicle --date 2026-05-25 --all --format json --out ./today.json

Picker keys

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	move
space / tab	toggle selection
a	select / clear all
/	fuzzy filter
enter	confirm selection
q / esc	cancel

In the editor: ctrl+s save · esc cancel.

Options

--since <when>      relative range, e.g. "7 days ago"
--from YYYY-MM-DD   start date (inclusive)
--to   YYYY-MM-DD   end date (inclusive; default today)
--month YYYY-MM     whole calendar month
--date  YYYY-MM-DD  single day
--author "Name"     author to match (default: git config user.name)
--user <login>      GitHub login for PR discovery (default: gh user)
--repos a,b,c       comma-separated repo paths
--root  ~/work      comma-separated dirs to auto-discover git repos under
--out <path>        output path (default: ~/Downloads, timestamped)
--format md|json    output format (default: md)
--all               select everything (skip the picker)
--no-edit           skip the editor step
--no-pr             skip GitHub PR + review discovery (git commits only)
--copy              copy the whole worklog to the clipboard (skips the picker)
-h, --help          show help

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Configuring which repos to scan

Repo sources are unioned and checked in this order:

1. --repos a,b,c — explicit repo paths
2. --root ~/work — directories to auto-discover git repos under
3. ./.commit-chronicle — explicit repo paths (one per line)
4. ~/.config/commit-chronicle/repos — same, global
5. ~/.config/commit-chronicle/roots — directories to auto-discover under
6. fallback: the current directory, if it's a git repo

The most convenient setup — point it at the folder that holds your projects, once:

mkdir -p ~/.config/commit-chronicle
echo '~/work' > ~/.config/commit-chronicle/roots

Now commit-chronicle scans every git repo under ~/work from anywhere, with no flags. See .commit-chronicle.example for the file format.

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Pull requests & reviews

PRs and reviews are included by default — there's no flag to turn them on. All you need is the GitHub CLI, authenticated once:

gh auth login        # one-time
gh auth status       # verify

With that in place, every run gathers, alongside your commits:

• pull requests you authored (tag PR)
• pull requests you reviewed (tag review, dated by your review)
• commits on your PRs that the plain author match might miss

Fork workflows just work. If you push to your own origin fork but open PRs and submit reviews against an upstream parent, discovery queries every remote — so your reviews on the upstream repo are found automatically.

Pass --no-pr if you ever want commits only. No gh installed (or not authenticated) also falls back to git-only, with a one-line note telling you how to enable PRs/reviews.

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How it works

• Commits come from git log --all --author=<you> across every ref.
• PRs / reviews come from gh (the GitHub CLI). It lists your PRs in the window, then fetches commit/review details per-PR — GitHub searches are date-bounded so it only inspects PRs that could fall in range.
• Fork-aware: discovery follows every remote of a repo, not just origin. In a fork workflow you push to your origin fork but open PRs and submit reviews against the upstream parent, so both are queried.
• Everything is keyed by hash (commits) or repo+number (PRs) and de-duplicated, so a commit that shows up both in history and on a PR appears once.
• Output is grouped by date; commits, PRs and reviews each render as distinct, link-bearing lines.

No gh, or pass --no-pr, and it runs git-only.

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Requirements

• git (required)
• gh, authenticated (gh auth login) — optional, for PR & review discovery
• a clipboard tool for --copy: pbcopy (macOS), wl-copy or xclip (Linux)

Security

All git/gh calls use an explicit argument vector (no shell), gh handles GitHub auth (no tokens touched here), and commit/PR text is stripped of terminal escape sequences before display. CI runs govulncheck on every push. See SECURITY.md for details and how to report issues.

License

See LICENSE.