DEV Community

Cover image for Badass Github contributions
Vlad Zhabinsky
Vlad Zhabinsky

Posted on

Badass Github contributions

Github has an interesting feature where it counts your contributions and shows a history of how often you commit your code to Github.

Github contributions example

I am very happy for this tool as it allows me to assess my activity levels throughout time 🧐

“Wait, mine is empty..”

Example of a boring contributions history

It might seem boring for your profile visitors when they land on your empty contribution history parts, but I see this as a good “billboard” slot for us to fill.

But...

What if we could put something interesting over there ? Maybe the name of the project we are developing ? Or maybe some memorable funny word to grasp our visitors’ attention for a moment?

Luckily, we can draw anything there if we want

Screenshot 2020-10-12 at 17.03.00

When generating contribution history Github is counting in even those commits / repositories which were created long time before the creation of your Github account.
Which is great for what we are trying to achieve: a personalised pattern in Github contribution history.
We can create a .git repository, push a bunch of commits in there, modify commits’ dates and thus achieve a desired pattern in contribution history.

Examples of my contribution history patterns

zhabinsky_ contributions for 2017
zhabinsky_ contributions for 2018

How to generate pattern?

Alt Text

I created a CLI tool for creating a custom pattern in the contributions history. The tool allows you to generate the pattern based on a text or an image.

The tool: https://github.com/zhabinsky/github-doodle

Example usage

npm i -g github-doodle
github-doodle --text="MEOW"
cd doodle
git remote add origin <YOUR_GITHUB_REPO>
git push -u origin master
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Credits:
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

Oldest comments (0)