Let’s be honest for a second.
GitHub contribution graphs are not a productivity metric.
They are a vibe metric.
I got tired of pretending otherwise, so I built a desktop app that automates commits for me. Not to fake work, but to remove the mental overhead of “oh no I forgot to commit today.”
This app runs locally, schedules commits, and pushes them directly to your repository. No browser tabs. No cron jobs duct taped together. Just open the app, configure it once, and let it handle the boring part.
Why build this instead of just committing manually?
Because consistency is not discipline. It is systems.
I noticed I was writing code regularly, but committing inconsistently. That gap was pure friction. So I removed it.
This project taught me more than expected
how to package a desktop app
how to handle Git authentication cleanly
how to build something people will immediately argue about
And honestly, that last part is the fun one.
You can judge the idea, but the app works. It ships. It solves a real annoyance.
Here is the repo
https://github.com/TROJANmocX/-Auto-Commit-Desktop-App.git
Curious question for you
Do tools like this reduce discipline or reveal how fake our productivity metrics already are
Top comments (17)
Hey, I totally understand and appreciate curiosity, learning, etc. But something else puzzles me: does anyone actually look at the number of commits and judge someone’s work based on that? That’s nonsense.
Ma'am, I agree with you. Judging someone’s work by commit count doesn’t make sense.
What I found interesting while building this was less the metric itself and more the quiet pressure it creates. Even when we know it’s not meaningful, it still influences how we think about our work. The project is really about acknowledging that gap, not endorsing the graph.
You're 100% right that it’s nonsense, but the scary part is how often that nonsense actually dictates a hiring decision.
I just sat in on an interview where our founder questioned a backend dev with 2 years of experience specifically because he only had 15 commits on GitHub. The candidate had to explain that his professional work belongs to his previous company and these were just personal projects.
Even though his answer was perfectly logical, the fact that he was put on the defensive in the first place proves the point: No matter how much we agree that commit counts are a 'fake' metric, candidates are still being judged by them. It creates this weird tax where engineers feel forced to keep a 'public' presence just to satisfy a recruiter's or founder's surface-level check, even if their real talent is hidden in private enterprise repos.
Phew, good thing I’ve never had to explain my rather moderate activity on GitHub ;)
Well, when I see that someone has a huge number of commits in their graph, I do tend to think they're "busy" - but I don't draw conclusions about the relevance or quality of their work ;-)
It might not even mean “busy.” A friend of mine was really surprised recently because he found someone’s GitHub account with tons of activity — literally every single day was filled. He kept wondering, how does this person even function? No holidays? No vacations?
Turns out they had a job set up that made a database backup every day 😅
Haha nice one, yeah it means very little, we can agree on that :-)
Oh, I just had to go back to that story and dig up this GitHub profile – it absolutely blew my mind 🤯
Here it is! I think I’m actually going to write a blog post about it next week 😄
I can already see it in my mind’s eye 😄
its still the same thing - automated commints, not the real work.. is it?
That’s true. It doesn’t automate real work. The work still has to happen. This only automates a small, mechanical step around it. For me, the value was removing friction and mental bookkeeping, not pretending activity equals output.
I've been working on a side project for a few weeks, outside of my day job. I've been stuck on a certain piece so I haven't committed to it in a few days, been spending my free time debugging even though I've been working on it over a few days.
Commit graph isn't a measure of productivity, just as lines of code isn't.
Any company that equates the two is probably not worth working for!
Wait if you don't commit often, how u manage version control.
Most of the time I don't revert my files but sometime I need to because AI messed up my code or i don't remember what decision i made that time.
If I m wrong, sorry but if I missing something, do tell me...
Your response to someone about someone who had a filled commit history from just backing up a database has me wondering, though I also suspect this is true by necessity, but does it only commit if there are actual changes to commit? So like, if I set up semi random daily commits, and then I don't work one day, does it just skip that commit?
Consistency isn’t discipline, it’s systems — agreed.
The real issue isn’t auto-commit vs manual commit, it’s what we choose to measure.
GitHub graphs were never designed as a productivity signal, yet we collectively turned them into one. Your tool doesn’t fake work — it exposes how shallow the metric already is.
From a systems perspective, this is just friction removal: writing code ≠ remembering to perform a symbolic action every 24h.
The only real risk is when the signal replaces the substance. As long as commits remain traceable to real changes, automation here is no different from CI, linters, or scheduled jobs.
In short: this doesn’t reduce discipline — it reveals where discipline was never the bottleneck.
Curious to see how people react when a “vibe metric” gets optimized like any other system.
Liking instantly for the yui thumbnail lol
hhh me too
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