devjournal

Automated AI-powered developer journaling CLI that preserves your GitHub contribution graph.

devjournal is a local CLI tool that automatically turns your daily Git activity into a clean, human-readable engineering journal — and pushes it to a public GitHub repository to keep your contribution graph active.

How It Works

Run devjournal sync at the end of your workday. The tool:

1. Scans your tracked project directories for every commit you made in the current session
2. Sanitizes the raw diff locally — strips API keys, secrets, and credentials before any network call
3. Summarizes the cleaned diff using Google Gemini into 3–4 concise technical bullet points
4. Publishes the entry to your public journal repo example: daily-learnings via an automated git push — creating a real commit and a real green square

Installation

npm install -g @notmanjit/devjournal

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18 or higher
• Git installed and configured (git config user.email must be set)
• A cloned public GitHub repo to serve as your journal
• A free Google Gemini API key

Quick Start

1. Create your journal repository

On GitHub, create a new public repo to record summarized updates. Clone it locally:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/daily-learnings.git

2. Run setup (one time only):

devjournal setup

An interactive wizard will ask for:

• Your Gemini API key
• Paths to the local project directories you want to track
• Path to your local journal repo clone

3. Sync at the end of each day:

devjournal sync

That's it. Your journal entry is written, committed, and pushed.

Commands

| Command | Description | |---|---| | devjournal setup | First-time configuration wizard | | devjournal sync | Run the full pipeline — scan, summarize, publish | | devjournal status | Show the last synced commit for each tracked project | | devjournal config | Display your current configuration | | devjournal reset | Clear sync state — next run re-scans from the last 24 hours | | devjournal --help | Show help menu | | devjournal --version | Show version |

How Syncing Works

devjournal tracks the last commit it successfully synced per project. Each run only picks up commits made after that checkpoint — so running sync twice in a row never duplicates an entry.

On the very first sync, it scans the last 24 hours as a baseline. Every sync after that uses the exact commit hash from the previous successful sync as the starting point — regardless of how much time has passed.

If you miss a day, it still works. The next sync picks up everything since the last checkpoint, across however many days.

Privacy & Security

• All sanitization happens in-memory, locally, before any network call
• Only the cleaned, redacted diff reaches the Gemini API
• Your ~/.devjournal.json config file (including your API key) is never committed or shared
• Redacted patterns include: API keys, passwords, tokens, secrets, database connection strings, AWS credentials, and PEM private keys

Configuration File

Config is stored at ~/.devjournal.json:

{
  "geminiApiKey": "your-api-key",
  "trackedProjects": [
    "/Users/you/projects/my-app",
    "/Users/you/projects/another-project"
  ],
  "journalRepoPath": "/Users/you/projects/daily-learnings",
  "createdAt": "2024-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Sync state (last checkpointed commit per project) is stored separately at ~/.devjournal-state.json and is managed automatically.