I Automated Daily Standups for Developers
Tags: javascript, webdev, showdev, github
Published: 2022-12-08 12:20:24

It's time for a standup!

These are the words that always put me in total panic mode.

I don't even have to hear them. A simple calendar notification will make the waters boil in me.

I have no idea what I've worked on yesterday. And I don't have the slightest idea what I'll be working on today. I just want to code in peace.

To put it as simply as I can, I'm not a big fan of daily standup meetings.

One day, I decided something about them. And that's the day when [Gitinerary](https://github.com/marketplace/gitinerary) was born.

![Gitinerary showcase](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6kaj3w78kvmzaktcc8ww.gif)

## How Gitinerary Works

The tool itself is actually very simple.

It listens to commit activity on the repo of your choice and displays a real-time report (the one you see in the example above).

Later on, you can browse the report in chronological order and filter it by your team members to see if someone is slacking.
To start using Gitinerary, all you have to do is add the app to your Github account or organization.

## How Can Gitinerary Help

The app is fairly simple. And we've already seen what it can do. 

But how can it actually help?

### It helps to track progress

By looking at the timeline, you can see how developers are progressing with their work. And by reading commit messages, you get a slight idea of what they're up to.

No need to disturb them on Slack or Teams.

### It helps to organize daily standups

You can use the timeline of a given day as a foundation for your daily standups.

You'll clearly see what was done by each developer. If there are some things that need discussion, you can do that. And if not, you can skip the daily altogether. 

### It helps to build a community

This one is maybe out there. But I've seen many indie hackers building in public.

With Gitinerary, you can take it one step further and share your timeline. Your customers will see how you're progressing, and maybe they'll feel more engaged.

## How I Built It

It only took me 1 day to build a prototype.

Half of that was trying to figure out how to plug into the GitHub ecosystem.

But when I figured this out, the process was quite straightforward. 

### Creating GitHub App

The first step was to create the GitHub app.

The app will listen to the activity inside GitHub repositories.

Whenever something happens, it stores it inside the database. Simple as that.

I used Probot to build the app. And just followed the documentation to achieve what I needed.

### Showing Timeline

The last step was to take the data and display it on the timeline.

For this part, I used NextJS to build a full-stack web application.

At this point, I'm very efficient with building interfaces. It only took me a couple of hours to build a simple landing page and the timeline page.

![Gitinerary timeline](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/akadipfb99t26ekbgkcg.png)

## What's Next

The app is up and running. But I bet you want to know what are the next plans.

First of all, I want to see if people are interested in using the app.

If they do, I'll start gathering feedback on how to improve the app. Add more features, fix bugs, and make the product better.
I also submitted the app to the GitHub marketplace and waiting for the response.

## Last Words

As you can see, building a side project is not rocket science.

And you don't have to spend months coding in your basement just to realize no one wants to use your product.

It took me a couple of days to get the app into the state it is now. And that's mostly because I focused on 1 single feature. Making sure it works as it should.

We'll see how we'll go from there. That's it for now.

If you want to try the demo, you can do so by installing [Gitinerary](https://github.com/marketplace/gitinerary)