gitload 🦦

A beautiful CLI to download files, folders, or entire repositories from GitHub URLs.

Use with AI agents

Give your AI coding agent the gitload skill so it can download files from GitHub on your behalf:

npx skills add waldekmastykarz/gitload

Once installed, ask your agent to "download files from GitHub", "fetch a folder from a repo", or "grab code from GitHub" and it will handle the rest.

Installation

npm install -g gitload-cli

Or run directly with npx:

npx gitload-cli <github-url>

Usage

gitload <url> [options]

Arguments:
  url                    GitHub URL (repo root, folder, or file)

Options:
  -z, --zip <path>       Save as ZIP file at the specified path
  -o, --output <dir>     Output directory (default: folder named after URL path)
  -t, --token <token>    GitHub personal access token (for private repos)
  --gh                   Use token from gh CLI (requires gh auth login)
  --no-color             Disable colored output
  -V, --version          Output version number
  -h, --help             Display help

Examples

Download an entire repository

gitload https://github.com/user/repo
# Creates ./repo/ folder

Download a specific folder

gitload https://github.com/user/repo/tree/main/src
# Creates ./src/ folder

Download a single file

gitload https://github.com/user/repo/blob/main/README.md
# Creates ./README.md

Download as a ZIP file

gitload https://github.com/user/repo -z ./repo.zip

Download to a custom directory

gitload https://github.com/user/repo/tree/main/src -o ./my-source
# Creates ./my-source/ folder

Download contents flat to current directory

gitload https://github.com/user/repo/tree/main/src -o .
# Downloads directly to current folder

Download a private repository

# Using gh CLI (if you have gh installed and logged in)
gitload https://github.com/user/private-repo --gh

# Using the --token flag
gitload https://github.com/user/private-repo --token ghp_xxxx

# Or using the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable
export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_xxxx
gitload https://github.com/user/private-repo

Authentication

Token priority (highest to lowest):

1. --token flag
2. GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable
3. --gh flag (uses gh auth token)

Features

• 📁 Download entire repositories, folders, or single files
• 🗜️ Create ZIP archives with the --zip option
• 🎨 Beautiful progress display with colors and progress bars
• 🔐 Support for private repositories via GitHub tokens
• ⚡ Efficient file discovery using GitHub's Git Trees API

Environment Variables

| Variable | Description | |----------|-------------| | GITHUB_TOKEN | GitHub personal access token (alternative to --token) |

Exit Codes

| Code | Meaning | |------|---------| | 0 | Success | | 1 | Runtime error (network, file system, etc.) | | 2 | Invalid usage (bad URL, missing arguments) |

License

MIT

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