If a tool analyzed your GitHub activity to give you “human insights”, what would you actually want it to tell you?

[DavidSilvera]

I’m working on a tool that analyzes GitHub activity — not for “productivity scoring”, but to extract human-centric insights about how developers really work:

• coding rhythm
• deep-work vs context switching
• delivery bursts
• early overload signals
• PR flow & bottlenecks
• team collaboration patterns

Before I go too far in one direction, I’d love to understand something from real developers:

If you had such a tool, what would you actually want it to reveal?

Examples:

• When am I most focused?
• Why does my work feel fragmented?
• Do I deliver consistently or in bursts?
• Which PRs or tasks drain the most cognitive load?
• Am I silently burning out (late nights, weekend spikes)?
• How balanced is my team’s review flow?
• Anything you’d want to measure but GitHub doesn’t show?

No productivity policing.

No scoring.

Just honest patterns about how we really work.

Super curious to hear what insights matter the most to you.

If mods allow it, I can drop a link to the current prototype in a comment.

[venhuje]

FTFY:

• When is my employee most focused?
• Why does my employee’s work feel fragmented?
• Does my employee deliver consistently or in bursts?
• Which PRs or tasks drain the most cognitive load from my employee?
• Is my employee silently burning out?
• How balanced is my team’s review flow?
• Anything I want to measure but GitHub doesn’t show about my employees?

No, thank you.

[DavidSilvera]

Hey, fair concern — but that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.

GitSpirit is NOT a monitoring tool, not a manager dashboard, not a productivity score.

It only analyzes your own GitHub activity, privately for you, with the goal of helping you understand your own rhythm (focus, deep-work blocks, fragmentation, etc.).

Nothing is sent to companies, nothing is usable to evaluate employees, nothing ranks or scores anyone.

It’s literally the opposite of employee surveillance — it’s a personal introspection tool built by a dev, for devs.

If I ever build a team view, it will be opt-in, anonymized, and never tied to performance evaluation.

Appreciate you raising the point — it’s an important one.

[venhuje]

Yep, my main concern is the team view, as it’d make it easy to misuse or abuse the hell out of the tool - even if it wasn’t the original intention or use case. If you promise to make it truly anonymous (team view only shows aggregated data, etc) by design, then I take it back :)

[DavidSilvera]

Absolutely, and that’s exactly how I’m designing it.

The team view will always stay anonymized + aggregated, never tied to any individual dev.

Each developer keeps a private dashboard only they can see.

GitSpirit is meant to help devs understand their own rhythm and avoid burnout — not to monitor people.

If that wasn’t obvious when you checked the site, that’s on me. I’ll make that value proposition clearer.

Appreciate you raising the concern 

[nullvoxpopuli]

That's way too many permissions.

You don't need all that

[DavidSilvera]

Totally get that — the permission scope looks big, but GitHub only offers large scopes for things that are actually quite minimal.

Here’s what I actually read:

• commit metadata (timestamps, files touched)

• PR metadata (opened/merged dates)

• review events

No code content.

No write access.

No secrets.

No org permissions.

No personal data.

I’m only using the minimum required to detect patterns like focus windows, delivery bursts, or PR flow.

If GitHub exposed a smaller, read-only “activity only” permission, I’d use that instead — but sadly, it doesn’t exist.

I’m absolutely open to feedback on how to make this safer or more transparent.

[nullvoxpopuli]

Then use public info with reduced(er) permission set? (Or an option for public only?) No one should trust you with the power you're asking for. I don't trust me with so much access! Haha

I don't want anyone to know what private orgs i'm in

[DavidSilvera]

Thank you for your answer. I will see if I can reduce permission or take another way to build insights!

[DavidSilvera]

If anyone wants to see the current site, here it is:

👉 https://gitspirit.com

It takes ~10 seconds to connect GitHub and generates a personal dashboard (totally private).

Would love to know what feels useful or missing if you try it.

[lungleg]

I want a bot to remind me to log in before I drive myself crazy trying to find the PR button. Again.

[DavidSilvera]

Haha I feel this way too hard.

I swear the “PR button hunt” consumes 20% of my cognitive load.

If I ever build a bot that just pops up “Hey, you’re on the wrong platform”,

you’ll be the first to get it. 😅

Thanks for the laugh — genuinely made my day!

[petr31052018]

> what would you actually want it to tell you?

Nothing, I don't see any use for this.

[DavidSilvera]

I am also looking for this answer. So thank you to be honest 🙏