For years, Jira was the place my team and I went to find the "truth" about what we were building. The problem was—it wasn’t where we actually worked. Every update meant jumping from IDE → browser → Jira tab → back again. Comments got missed, attachments buried, and the whole workflow felt like we were juggling tools instead of solving problems.
So I tried something different: I pulled Jira into my repo. Literally.
Markdown as My Backlog
Every Jira issue shows up in my project as a markdown file inside a dedicated, git-ignored folder. Titles, descriptions, status, metadata—everything lives in plain text.
That means:
- I can open issues side by side with the code they affect.
- My editor (VS Code, Vim, whatever) becomes my backlog manager.
- Issues are just files—easy to search, grep, diff, and commit like any other artifact.
It’s the same developer muscle memory, applied to work tracking.
Attachments and Comments
Attachments sync into the same structure. Screenshots, design PDFs, logs—they all land right next to the issue file, in a predictable location. No hunting through Jira’s UI.
Comments? They become part of the markdown history. I see the conversation inline, where it actually matters. And because it’s all backed by Git, I can diff when a comment was added, or restore context if something goes sideways.
Why This Works
- Fewer Context Switches: I don’t leave my coding environment to update Jira.
- Better Communication: Comments are preserved in the repo, versioned like code.
- Conflict-Friendly: Since it’s a separate git repo inside the project (and ignored by the main one), merge conflicts with Jira syncs don’t pollute my mainline codebase.
- AI-Ready: Copilot and other AI tools can pull from the same local context—issues, attachments, and discussion are part of the project fabric.
A Different Mental Model
Instead of Jira being “over there” in the browser, it’s just another part of my repo. Jira remains the source of truth, but the place I work with it is where my hands already are—inside the editor, inside the terminal, inside the repo.
For me, that shift has been huge. Less overhead. More flow. And when teammates step in, the context they need is already embedded in the project.
👉 Curious about trying this yourself? I built a CLI that makes it happen: imdone.io
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