Collectors

git-brief does not rely on a single git log command. To capture the full context of a developer’s day, it runs multiple independent collectors concurrently.

flowchart LR
  subgraph Local Workspace
    A[git log]
    B[git status]
    C[git stash]
  end

  subgraph GitHub API
    D[Merged PRs]
    E[Draft/WIP PRs]
    F[Issue Activity]
  end

  A & B & C --> G(Git Collector)
  D & E & F --> H(GitHub Collector)

  G & H --> I[Data Bundle]
  I --> J[AI System Prompt]

The Git Collector

The Git collector walks through your configured workspace directories and scans every repository. For each repo, it runs:

git log: Fetches all commits from the last 24 hours (or 72 hours on Mondays). It uses a custom delimiter string to securely parse the Author Name, Author Email, Commit Date (%cI), and the body of the commit to check for Co-authored-by: tags.
git status --porcelain: Reads your uncommitted working tree. It grabs up to 5 filenames you are currently modifying so the AI knows what you’re actively building.
git log -g refs/stash: Reads your recent stashes, capturing work you had to put on pause.

The GitHub Collector

If a GitHub token is provided, this collector runs three highly specific queries against the GitHub Search API:

Merged/Reviewed: author:<user> type:pr merged:><date> and reviewed-by:<user> type:pr updated:><date>
Drafts: author:<user> type:pr updated:><date> -is:merged
Issues: involves:<user> type:issue updated:><date>

It deduplicates the results by PR/Issue number and passes them to the AI pipeline.