ghactivities

ghactivities is a Go CLI that exports your GitHub activity as JSON files. It authenticates as the current GitHub user, fetches supported event types from the GitHub GraphQL API, and writes machine-friendly output that can be archived, transformed, or imported into downstream tooling.

What it collects

ghactivities currently collects these event categories for the authenticated user:

• issues you opened
• issue comments you wrote
• discussions you created
• discussion comments you wrote
• pull requests you opened
• pull request comments you wrote
• commits authored by you on default branches of repositories you contributed to during the selected time range

Each JSON event includes the event type, creation timestamp, resource metadata, and repository owner/name/visibility.

Installation and build

Run directly from the repository:

go run ./cmd/ghactivities --help

Build a local binary:

go build -o ./bin/ghactivities ./cmd/ghactivities

Then run it with:

./bin/ghactivities --help

Authentication

ghactivities resolves credentials in this order:

1. --github-token
2. GITHUB_TOKEN
3. gh auth token

If you want to rely on GitHub CLI authentication, make sure gh auth login has already been completed on your machine.

Quick start

Export the last 2 weeks of public activity to the default file:

go run ./cmd/ghactivities

Write to a custom file:

go run ./cmd/ghactivities --output ./out/ghactivities.json

Collect both public and private activity for a specific time window:

go run ./cmd/ghactivities \
  --visibility all \
  --since 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z \
  --until 2026-01-31T23:59:59Z

Use an explicit token and reverse chronological ordering:

go run ./cmd/ghactivities \
  --github-token "$GITHUB_TOKEN" \
  --order desc

CLI options

--github-token      GitHub access token
--output            Output file path (default: ./ghactivities.json)
--since             Start date in ISO8601 format (default: 2 weeks ago)
--until             End date in ISO8601 format (default: now)
--visibility        Repository visibility: public, private, all (default: public)
--max-length-size   Max output file size such as 1B, 2K, 2M (default: 1M)
--max-tokens        Max output file tokens from rendered JSON (default: 0, disabled)
--order             Event order: asc, desc (default: asc)
--help              Show help

Notes:

• --since and --until must be valid RFC3339 / ISO8601 timestamps such as 2026-03-15T12:00:00Z.
• --visibility private limits results to repositories GitHub reports as private.
• --order asc returns oldest-first output; --order desc returns newest-first output.
• --max-tokens counts tokens from the formatted JSON content using github.com/tiktoken-go/tokenizer with the o200k_base encoding.

Output files and splitting

By default, ghactivities writes a formatted JSON array to ./ghactivities.json.

If the rendered JSON exceeds --max-length-size or --max-tokens, ghactivities automatically splits the result into numbered files that keep the same base name and extension:

• ./ghactivities_1.json
• ./ghactivities_2.json
• ./ghactivities_3.json

For example:

go run ./cmd/ghactivities \
  --output ./exports/activity.json \
  --max-length-size 256K \
  --max-tokens 20000

This produces either ./exports/activity.json or, when splitting is needed, files like ./exports/activity_1.json, ./exports/activity_2.json, and so on.

Splitting keeps the existing event order intact and fills files in sequence. When both limits are set, ghactivities uses whichever limit is reached first for each chunk.

If a single rendered event already exceeds --max-length-size, it is still written as its own numbered file because it cannot be split further. If a single rendered event exceeds --max-tokens, ghactivities returns an error instead of silently writing a file above the requested token cap.

Development setup

This repository uses mise for contributor setup and toolchain management.

Recommended first command for contributors:

mise run setup

mise run setup keeps local setup to one command by:

• installing the pinned tools with mise install
• running go mod tidy to sync Go module dependencies
• installing the local git hooks with lefthook install

If you need to run the steps manually:

mise install
go mod tidy
lefthook install

Current development tooling includes:

• go for building and testing ghactivities
• lefthook for local git hook management
• gitleaks for secret scanning in the pre-commit hook

The configured pre-commit hook runs gitleaks against staged changes and blocks commits if potential secrets are detected.

Testing and validation

Run the test suite:

go test ./...

Build the CLI:

go build -o ./bin/ghactivities ./cmd/ghactivities

Inspect the generated help text:

go run ./cmd/ghactivities --help

Release automation

GitHub Actions handles CI and release builds for ghactivities.

• .github/workflows/ci.yml runs go test ./..., builds ./bin/ghactivities, and verifies the binary exists on pushes and pull requests to main.
• .github/workflows/release.yml runs tests and builds release binaries when a GitHub Release is created.
• Release assets are published for linux/amd64, darwin/amd64, darwin/arm64, and windows/amd64.

Implementation notes

• ghactivities uses the GitHub GraphQL API.
• Commit discovery first identifies contributed repositories from the user's contributions collection, then reads authored commits from each repository's default branch within the requested date range.
• Output is written as JSON with stable file naming that preserves the requested output base path.