What would your GitHub look like as a TV news report?

#ai #webdev #showdev #github

DEV·TV is a free, open-source TV for developer content: one index.html, no backend. This week it got a new key, ★ YOU ON TV.

Type any GitHub username and the TV breaks into a special report about that developer, built only from their public profile:

BREAKING: "Octo Dev has been shipping on GitHub since 2016. Sources confirm they have not stopped."
BY THE NUMBERS: stars across their own repos
LANGUAGE DESK: their top language, with a joke to match. For Rust: "The borrow checker has issued a statement of approval."
FAN FAVOURITE: their most-starred project
DEVELOPING STORY: their latest push
AUDIENCE: their followers

Then copy a link (?on=username opens straight on that report), post it on X, or download a 1200×675 card with the link printed on it.

How it works

Two public GitHub API calls from the visitor's own browser: the profile, and up to 100 repos. No keys, no login, nothing stored. Forks are left out of every count, so one popular fork can't inflate someone's stars, and everything from the profile is escaped before it reaches the page. The card is drawn on a canvas, so there's no screenshot library either.

From report to Spotlight

DEV·TV has a Spotlight channel for community projects. The report ends with a Submit for Spotlight button:

You pick one of your top three original repos. Forks, archived repos and your profile README repo are skipped, because "most-starred" is often an old tutorial or a template.
The details are filled in from the repo, and you can edit them first.
Nothing is sent until you tap, and I choose what goes on the channel by hand.

Because anyone can type any username, the submission I receive says GitHub ownership isn't verified, so I check before I feature anyone.