Mohit Kumar Kushwaha

Posted on Mar 25

HelloDev - Scrum powered by Notion

#devchallenge #notionchallenge #mcp #ai

Notion MCP Challenge Submission 🧠

This is a submission for the Notion MCP Challenge

HelloDev — The Sprint Tracker That Runs Itself

No standups. No manual updates. Just ship.

What I Built

HelloDev is an agentic sprint tracking system built for the modern SDLC — one where developers shouldn't have to touch a project management tool to keep it accurate.

The core idea: a developer runs hellodev start bug-#3 --dev Alice, writes code, commits, and runs hellodev done bug-#3. That's it. Everything else — Notion updates, activity logs, time tracking, commit counts — happens automatically in the background.

The Problem It Solves

Engineering teams waste real hours each week on ritual updates:

Moving Jira/Notion cards manually
Writing standup messages nobody reads
Copy-pasting commit summaries into ticket comments

HelloDev eliminates this entirely by treating the developer's actual workflow (git commits, coding sessions, CLI commands) as the source of truth — and syncing it directly to Notion.

Architecture

Developer Machine
│
├── hellodev CLI           → POST /start, /done, /status
├── Git post-commit hook   → POST /commit (auto, no dev action)
└── VSCode Copilot Chat    → MCP tools (list_tasks, start_task, etc.)
        │
        ▼
Express Server (localhost:3333)
        │
        ├── Session Manager    (in-memory, single active task)
        ├── Timer + Idle Det.  (5-min idle threshold)
        └── Notion Client      (@notionhq/client v2.2.15)
                │
                ▼
        Notion Workspace
        ├── Sprint Board       (task lifecycle: Todo → In Progress → Done)
        ├── Activity Logs      (per-session: time, commits, lines changed)
        └── Developers         (team registry)

Key design decisions:

MCP server uses stdio transport — runs as a subprocess in VSCode, zero network config
MCP tools proxy to Express via axios — clean separation of concerns
@notionhq/client pinned to v2.2.15 — v5.x has breaking API changes, stay pinned
CommonJS throughout (no TypeScript) — faster iteration, simpler deployment
Git hook is pure bash + curl — no Node dependency in the hook itself

What It Tracks Automatically

Every session captures:

Metric	Source
Session start / end time	Timer module
Total hours coded	Idle-aware timer
Commit count	Git hook → POST /commit
Commit messages	Git hook (pipe-separated)
Files changed	`git diff --stat` in hook
Lines added / removed	`git diff --numstat` in hook

All of this lands in a linked Activity Log entry in Notion, related back to the Sprint Board task.

Video Demo

Show us the code

🔗 GitHub: github.com/KimtVak8143/HelloDev

How I Used Notion MCP

Notion MCP is the backbone of HelloDev's intelligence layer — specifically what makes it agentic rather than just a logging tool.

The Integration

HelloDev uses two separate MCP surfaces:

HelloDev MCP Server (custom, stdio):
Runs as a subprocess in VSCode via mcp.json. Exposes 5 tools to GitHub Copilot Chat:

Tool	What it does
`list_tasks`	Pulls pending Sprint Board tasks for a developer
`start_task`	Marks task In Progress in Notion + starts timer
`complete_task`	Marks Done, seals the Activity Log
`get_status`	Returns live session: elapsed time + commits
`get_sprint`	Full sprint board overview

This means a developer can type in Copilot Chat: "What tasks do I have this sprint?" and get a live Notion query — no context switching, no browser tab.

Direct Notion API via @notionhq/client :
Under the hood, every MCP tool call hits the Express server, which calls Notion directly.

What Notion MCP Unlocks

Without MCP, HelloDev would be a CLI tool that talks to Notion. Useful, but closed. With MCP:

Copilot Chat becomes a sprint interface — ask questions, get Notion data, trigger actions — all from the editor
The system is composable — future AI agents can call list_tasks or get_sprint as part of larger automated workflows
Zero context switching — the developer's entire sprint lives inside their coding environment

The real unlock is that Notion stops being a destination you visit and becomes a data layer your tools read and write automatically.

What's Next — Auto Standup Report delivered to your inbox

The next phase generates a daily Notion page at EOD — summarizing every developer's activity from the last 24 hours:

Tasks completed
Total hours coded
Commits made
Active blockers (tasks still In Progress)

No meeting. No Slack message. Just open Notion Monday morning.

Built with Node.js · Express · Notion API · MCP SDK · Git hooks

🚀 What's Further Ahead — VSCode Extension

The natural evolution of HelloDev is a first-class VSCode Extension —
eliminating even the CLI and making sprint tracking truly invisible to the developer.

What the Extension Would Do

Auto-detect the active git repo and developer identity
Show a status bar item: ⏱ bug-#3 — 1h 24m — 3 commits
Trigger start/done via the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P → HelloDev: Start Task)
Surface pending sprint tasks in a dedicated sidebar panel (TreeView)
Replace the git hook with a native VSCode workspace.onDidSaveTextDocument listener

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