Know when your repos move ahead.
- Role
- Product, design and development
- Year
- 2026
- Tools
- Electron, JavaScript, Node.js, GitHub REST API, electron-builder, GitHub Actions, winget
- Type
- Self-initiated
A small desktop widget for Windows that watches your GitHub repositories, turns red with a count of commits you are behind, and pulls them into your local clone in one click.
- 01
Challenge
When several people, or several of your own machines, push to the same repositories, your local clone quietly falls behind. Finding out meant opening a browser tab or running git in a terminal for every project, so it was easy to start work on stale code. The answer had to be glanceable, cost almost nothing to run, and never pull into the wrong folder.
- 02
Approach
One small always-on-top widget instead of another window to open. It compares each repository’s latest commit on GitHub with the last one you pulled, and polls with conditional requests so an unchanged repository costs nothing against GitHub’s rate limit. Everything privileged stays in the main process: the sandboxed interface only draws the state it is sent, and git runs with fixed arguments and no shell.
- 03
Solution
A watchlist with a status dot per repository: green when everything is in sync, red with “3 behind” when it is not, amber when a check fails and says why. One click fast-forwards your clone, after checking that the folder you picked really is a clone of that exact repository. It also offers a branch picker, optional desktop notifications, a tray icon coloured by the worst status, and a start-with-Windows option. The GitHub token needs read access only, is encrypted with the Windows keychain and sent only to GitHub. Releases build and publish themselves from a tag, and the app updates itself.
- 04
Outcome
Released as open source (MIT) and installable with one command, winget install gitpulse, on Windows 10 and 11 with no admin rights. Version 1.1.0 added the multi-repository watchlist and verified pulls. It is the studio’s example of a small, focused tool built to be safe by default.