This is a submission for the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge
What I Built
Every developer knows this moment: it's standup time, someone asks "what did you do yesterday?" and your mind goes completely blank. You stare at your terminal, maybe run git log, and try to reconstruct your day from cryptic commit messages like fix: resolve edge case and wip: stuff.
I run bootstrapped startups from Addis Ababa. No team lead reviewing my PRs, no standup bot. Just me and my git history. I needed a way to look back at a day, a week, a release and actually understand what happened. Not commit hashes. Stories.
devlog is a CLI tool that reads your git history and uses GitHub Copilot CLI to transform raw commits into human-readable narratives daily journals, standup reports, weekly recaps, and release notes.
But here's the part that genuinely surprised me: Copilot CLI doesn't just summarize commit messages. It reads your actual source code. When I ran devlog standup on a test project, it opened my auth.ts file, saw that the function returned hardcoded true, and flagged it as a blocker. I asked it for a standup and it gave me a code review. I didn't expect that.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
devlog today |
AI-generated journal of today's work |
devlog standup |
Yesterday / Today / Blockers format |
devlog week |
Weekly recap grouped by day |
devlog release |
Categorized release notes since last tag |
devlog recap a1b2..c3d4 |
Summarize any custom commit range |
Every command exports to Markdown (-o file.md) or JSON (--json) for automation.
The meta moment: I used devlog to generate its own development journal. It works.
Demo
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Garinmckayl/devlog-cli
Video Walkthrough
devlog today — AI-generated journal from your git history:
devlog standup — Copilot CLI reads your source code and finds real blockers:
devlog today — What did I actually do?
Running devlog today in any git repo gives you this:
╭───────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ │
│ devlog — AI-powered developer journal │
│ Powered by GitHub Copilot CLI ✨ │
│ │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────╯
✓ GitHub Copilot CLI detected AI summaries enabled
══ Today's Work — test-repo
Branch: master • Author: Natnael Getenew Zeleke
5 commits • 1 author • 5 files changed
├ eb72c59 docs: add initial API documentation
│ Natnael Getenew Zeleke • 26m ago
│ docs/README.md
│
├ 0283eab refactor: extract middleware into separate module
│ Natnael Getenew Zeleke • 26m ago
│ src/middleware.ts
│
├ 99fc75d fix: improve error handling for edge cases
│ Natnael Getenew Zeleke • 26m ago
│ src/errors.ts
│
├ d4b5e31 feat: add authentication module and input validation
│ Natnael Getenew Zeleke • 26m ago
│ src/auth.ts, src/validate.ts
│
└ e2f0784 feat: initialize project with TypeScript setup
Natnael Getenew Zeleke • 26m ago
╭ AI Summary ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ │
│ ## Developer Journal - February 13, 2026 │
│ │
│ **Project Setup & Core Features** │
│ - Initialized TypeScript project structure │
│ - Implemented authentication module with input validation support │
│ (auth.ts, validate.ts) │
│ │
│ **Code Quality Improvements** │
│ - Refactored middleware logic into separate module for better │
│ organization │
│ - Enhanced error handling to cover additional edge cases │
│ │
│ **Documentation** │
│ - Created initial API documentation structure │
│ │
│ --- │
│ *5 commits total • 5 files changed, 5 insertions(+)* │
│ │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
Generated by devlog • Powered by GitHub Copilot CLI
devlog standup The one that blew my mind
This is where Copilot CLI went beyond what I thought it could do. I ran devlog standup and it didn't just list my commits it opened my source files and identified real issues:
══ Standup Report test-repo
Branch: master • Friday, February 13, 2026
╭ AI Standup Report ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ │
│ **STANDUP REPORT - Natnael Getenew Zeleke** │
│ **Project:** test-repo │
│ **Date:** February 13, 2026 │
│ │
│ **YESTERDAY:** │
│ - No commits or work completed │
│ │
│ **TODAY:** │
│ - ✅ Initialized TypeScript project structure │
│ - ✅ Built authentication module with token-based auth │
│ (`src/auth.ts`) │
│ - ✅ Implemented input validation utilities (`src/validate.ts`) │
│ - ✅ Added centralized error handling (`src/errors.ts`) │
│ - ✅ Extracted middleware layer for better separation of concerns │
│ (`src/middleware.ts`) │
│ - ✅ Started API documentation with authentication endpoint │
│ (`docs/README.md`) │
│ │
│ **PLANNED/NEXT:** │
│ - Complete API documentation for remaining endpoints │
│ - Add comprehensive tests for auth, validation, and error handling │
│ - Implement actual authentication logic (currently returns stub │
│ `true`) │
│ - Enhance validation with more robust rules beyond length checks │
│ │
│ **BLOCKERS:** │
│ - ⚠️ Auth module is currently a stub - needs actual token │
│ verification logic │
│ - ⚠️ No tests exist yet for any modules │
│ - ⚠️ Missing TypeScript configuration files (tsconfig.json) │
│ - ⚠️ Validation is minimal - production needs schema validation │
│ (e.g., Zod, Joi) │
│ - ⚠️ Error handling lacks structured error responses and logging │
│ strategy │
│ │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
Those blockers are real. Copilot CLI actually read src/auth.ts, saw the stub return true, noticed there are no tests, and flagged that validation is too minimal for production. I asked for a standup report and got a code review. This isn't summarization it's Copilot CLI's agentic capabilities turning commit metadata into actionable insight.
Export to Markdown & JSON
# Save today's journal for your team wiki
devlog today -o journal.md
# Pipe JSON into other tools or Slack bots
devlog today --json | jq '.summary'
# Weekly recap as a markdown file
devlog week -o weekly-recap.md
Try it yourself
git clone https://github.com/Garinmckayl/devlog-cli.git
cd devlog-cli
npm install && npm run build
cd /any/git/repo
node /path/to/devlog-cli/dist/index.js today
My Experience with GitHub Copilot CLI
Copilot CLI as the Product's Brain
devlog uses gh copilot -- -p (the prompt interface) as its AI backend. Here's what it does under the hood:
Input: Raw commit data formatted as a prompt:
Summarize these git commits from today in "my-project" by Natnael
as a short developer journal entry:
- [a3f21bc] feat: add user authentication flow (files: src/auth.ts, src/middleware.ts)
- [9c0e412] fix: resolve token expiration edge case (files: src/auth.ts)
- [7fd7744] refactor: clean up error handling (files: src/utils/errors.ts)
Output from Copilot CLI: A structured, narrative summary that groups related work, identifies patterns, and even reads source files when available.
The standup command is where it gets wild. I pass yesterday's and today's commits, and Copilot CLI:
- Summarizes what was done
- Infers what's planned based on the direction of work
- Identifies potential blockers by actually reading the code — it caught stubbed functions, missing tests, and oversimplified validation
The Agentic Surprise
I built devlog expecting Copilot CLI to be a text summarizer. Feed it commit messages, get a paragraph back. What I didn't anticipate was the agentic behavior — Copilot CLI actually inspects your working directory. In the standup output above, you can see it ran ls, read src/auth.ts, read package.json, and used that context to generate blockers I hadn't even thought of.
This changes what a "commit summarizer" can be. It's not reformatting git log. It's understanding your project.
Copilot CLI as My Dev Companion
I also used Copilot CLI throughout the build process:
gh copilot -- -p "What's the best way to parse git log dates in ISO 8601 format with simple-git?"— Saved me from a timezone bug. Copilot CLI explained thatsimple-gitreturns dates in ISO format but the--afterflag needs a specific format string.gh copilot -- -p "How do I detect the latest git tag and get commits since that tag?"— Led me togit describe --tags --abbrev=0which I wouldn't have found easily in docs.Architecture discussions — I described what I wanted to build and Copilot CLI helped me structure the modules: separating git parsing, AI integration, UI rendering, and export into clean boundaries.
The Fallback Design
Without Copilot CLI, devlog still works it falls back to keyword-based categorization (feat/fix/refactor). But with Copilot CLI, it becomes genuinely intelligent. The standup blockers, the code-aware summaries, the narrative structure all of that requires Copilot CLI.
Tech Stack
- TypeScript + Node.js
-
simple-git- git log parsing -
commander- CLI interface -
chalk+boxen+ora— terminal UI -
date-fns- date manipulation - GitHub Copilot CLI (
gh copilot -- -p) AI-powered summarization, categorization, and code-aware standup generation
devlog is open source under the MIT license. Built from Addis Ababa by Natnael Getenew Zeleke.
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