Spiral

A tiny helper for Linear & Git Town workflow

Package Verification

This project is built with GitHub Actions and signed with artifact attestations for supply chain security.

• https://github.com/thekarel/spiral/attestations
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/@thekarel/spiral#provenance-details-header

Installation

npm install -g @thekarel/spiral

This will give you a CLI command named spiral.

You can also try using

npx @thekarel/spiral

Linear API Key

Export your API key as LINEAR_API_KEY.

You can create one in your Linear account settings under Security & access. Permissions to add:

• by default you can just use a read-only token,
• if you want to use the status update feature, you need to add the "Read" and "Write all data" permissions (but not admin)

Git Town

Git Town needs to be installed.

What is this?

This tool slightly simplifies a very specific and repetitive workflow:

1. Creating a new, clean branch from a Linear ticket using Git Town
2. Work...
3. Fill the commit message with the ticket information from Linear
4. Publish the changes in a sane way using Git Town

If you've been doing git town hack and git town ship often you know what I mean.

The CLI has the following commands:

1. spiral hack abc-123: Create a new branch like abc-123-title-of-ticket from a Linear ticket number
2. spiral ship: Pre-fill the commit message with the ticket information and run git town ship
3. spiral init: Creates an empty config file called spiral.yaml if no config exitst yet (config file is completely optional)

Config file

You can have a config file at .spiral.yaml, spiral.yaml or at process.env.SPIRAL_CONFIG_FILE. See the config example for all options.

Commands

hack

The hack command creates a new branch by reading the ticket title from the provided ticket number/id.

The format of the branch name is ticket-number-title-of-your-ticket, for example abc-123-exciting-the-new-feature.

Benefit: no need to hunt for the branch name in Linear or type it in manually. It's enough to remember the ticket number, the prefix is usually well known already.

Example:

# spiral hack --help
spiral hack abc-123

See the config example for more options.

ship

The ship command pre-fills the commit message with the ticket information, allows you to edit the message and then runs git town ship.

By default the commit message looks like this:

fix: Title of your ticket (abc-123)

Fixes abc-123

https://link-to-your-ticket

Benefit: avoid copy-pasting all the bits and manually formatting the commit message into the expected format.

Example:

# spiral ship --help
spiral ship

Context:

• Linear: https://linear.app/
• Git Town: https://git-town.com/