Stakeout

Surveillance ops for your codebase. AI-powered change tracking that turns your git history into readable summaries.

Stop reading diffs. Start understanding changes.

What It Does

Every time you commit (or manually record), Stakeout:

1. Captures the diff
2. Sends it to an AI (local Ollama or OpenAI)
3. Generates a human-readable summary focused on why and impact
4. Stores it in a searchable database

Later you can:

• Browse your dev history as readable summaries
• Search through past changes
• Chat with AI about your codebase evolution
• Generate digests ("what happened this week?")
• Tag, favorite, and annotate entries

Install

npm install -g stakeout
# or
npx stakeout

Quick Start

# Initialize in your repo
stakeout init

# Record current changes
stakeout record

# View recent summaries
stakeout log

# See what you did this week
stakeout log --since "1 week"

Commands

| Command | What It Does | |---------|--------------| | stakeout init | Initialize for a repo, optionally install git hook | | stakeout record | Record and summarize current changes | | stakeout log | View recorded summaries | | stakeout search <query> | Search through summaries | | stakeout chat | Chat with AI about your codebase history | | stakeout digest | Generate high-level digest of recent activity | | stakeout stats | Show statistics and analytics | | stakeout watch | Watch for changes and auto-record | | stakeout hook | Install git post-commit hook for auto-recording | | stakeout dashboard | Open web UI | | stakeout tui | Open terminal UI |

AI Configuration

Stakeout uses Ollama by default (free, local, private).

# Check current config
stakeout config --show

# Use Ollama (default)
stakeout config --provider ollama
stakeout config --ollama-model llama3.1

# Or use OpenAI
stakeout config --provider openai
stakeout config --openai-key sk-...
stakeout config --openai-model gpt-4o-mini

Auto-Recording

Set it and forget it:

# Install git hook (records on every commit)
stakeout hook

# Or watch mode (records on file changes)
stakeout watch

Organization

# Tag entries
stakeout tag 42 --add "feature,auth"

# Mark as favorite
stakeout note 42 --favorite

# Add notes
stakeout note 42 --note "This fixed the login bug"

# Mark breaking changes
stakeout note 42 --breaking

# Filter by tag
stakeout log --tag feature

# Show only favorites
stakeout log --favorites

Export

# Export to markdown
stakeout export --format markdown --since "1 month" -o changelog.md

# Export to JSON
stakeout export --format json -o history.json

Multi-Repo

# Add repos to track
stakeout repo --add /path/to/project

# List tracked repos
stakeout repo --list

Storage

Everything stored locally in ~/.stakeout/:

• stakeout.db — SQLite database
• config.json — settings

Your code never leaves your machine (unless you choose OpenAI).

Why?

Because "what did I do last week?" shouldn't require archaeology.

Because commit messages are often "fix" or "wip" or nothing at all.

Because AI can read your diffs and tell you what actually changed.

Built for devs who want their git history to make sense.