This is a submission for the 2025 Hacktoberfest Writing Challenge: Contribution Chronicles
Once upon a Friday morning, coffee in hand, the writer peered into the blog and found a tiny bug hiding between the posts.
Between mixing posts and capturing PRs, a bug had been created without the writer realizing it.
But this is not the tale of that bug, this tale is about a change made after the bug was dealt with when the writer and her faithful helper bot started their quest…
Something woke up the ick monster
For the last eight or so posts, the writer had forgotten to set a variable that routes articles to their language-specific pages.
This bug wasn’t huge, but it still annoyed the writer just the same: new posts appeared on the main mixed-language feed, but not on the English or Portuguese pages.
Noticing the issue the writer quickly cast away this tiny bug with the GitHub Mobile app and an equally tiny PR.
While reviewing the preview for the pull request, something else felt off. The cover images had started to feel a bit too generic for what the writer have been publishing recently around Preptember and Hacktoberfest.
All posts said “miscellaneous” and the result was that the writer found a baby ick for the covers she used and loved for such a long time.
The ick is a terrible monster that makes every writer (and developer) want to change their website. If left alone, the ick always grows into a terrible monster that only gets defeated by a complete website overhaul.
As the coffee started to wake the writer’s brain, an idea popped into her head:
it is time to brew a new cover image!
The writer normally cycles between a few covers, with the color scheme from the use on the blog and a cover saying “open source” felt descriptive and better aligned with the last few posts written.
Or so the writer thought…
Setting GitHub Copilot in motion
After creating, exporting the new cover, and uploading it to the CDN, the writer had all the ingredients to brew a new spell.
The writer opened an issue with the ingredients and the instructions to defeat the ick: Change cover image on open source related posts to the new cover image. And gave everything to the trusty robot by assigning it to GitHub Copilot.
When you assign an issue to your trusty robot, it will start to work right away creating a draft PR, saying that it is going to work on the issue and that it will update the PR while it progresses.
A few minutes later, Copilot updated the PR with a checklist of the steps it would take to make the proposed changes. It read like a neat spell scroll, with steps listed line by line.
The writer was actually surprised by finding out that 27 posts about open source existed. So much so that the writer thought the bot made a mistake and gathered wrong posts to update the cover.
Little did the writer know that the bot found posts from a long time ago…
Work done but minds changed
With the work actually done the little robot updated the pull request, put together an overview of the changes, and called the writer in for a review of the spell before it could be cast to production.
That’s how the writer confirmed that actually 27 posts were about open source:
- 8 about Preptember
- 4 about GitFichas
- 2 about pull requests
- And incredible 13 about Hacktoberfest
The writer could feel the spell working and got really excited to see the preview of the posts with the new cover!
But the excitement didn’t last long…
The ick attacks again
When the page loaded the writer’s happiness went a little bit like this:
YAY NEW COVER… wait…
awww every single post open source now 😮💨
at least the new cover looks great ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The writer quickly realized that this baby ick was strong and ready to fight.
Fearing the ick would get out of control pretty soon, the writer created two new covers to add to the spell: one for Hacktoberfest and one for Preptember posts.
Without delay the two new covers were added and with a comment the writer put the robot to work once again and waited.
Watching the work closely
To avoid anymore problems this time around, the writer also looked at the work while it was happening by casting the View session spell.
Viewing a session gives you a window to the little robot’s thinking. It let’s you observe all the steps the trusty robot is making while they are happening.
The happy ending
A few minutes later, Copilot finished implementing the changes and writer could look at preview again.
This time around the ick looked far away like it was weak. The variety helped keep the ick away. 😅
Sipping coffee, fixing bugs, and watching Copilot work gave the writer hope for an ick-less future. What started as a simple fix turned into a cover image overhaul.
By the time of the second cup of coffee, the pull request was merged and the spell had taken root. The Hacktoberfest posts now have their own cover, the Preptember ones have theirs, and the rest of the open source content has a fresh new look.
The ick is gone, replaced by covers that actually represent what the recent posts are about.
Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest difference. Sometimes, all it takes is a cup of coffee, a robot assistant, and a little bit of magic.
And so, with a little bit of coffee and a helpful robot, the writer lived happily ever after, at least for now…
The end
Tiny side note: I find it extremely amusing when Copilot reacts with 👀 to the comments tagging it.
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