Private Work Contributions Mirror

Mirror commit timestamps from private work repositories to your GitHub contribution graph without exposing any code. This innovative solution addresses the common issue faced by developers working on private projects, where empty squares dominate their GitHub profiles, leaving recruiters, collaborators, and the open-source community unaware of their actual contributions.

The Challenge

Developers contribute significantly to private repositories, but their GitHub activity often appears flat. The public contribution graph lacks visibility, which can affect professional opportunities and collaboration.

The Solution

This project provides a script to mirror work activity to a public repository while maintaining privacy. By only transferring commit timestamps, it allows users to reflect their actual work effort on their profiles without compromising the confidentiality of the code.

Usage Example

Before                              After
┌────────────────────────┐          ┌────────────────────────┐
│ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ │          │ ░█░██░█░░█░██░█░░█░██░ │
│ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ │    →     │ ░█░██░█░░█░██░█░░█░██░ │
│ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ │          │ ░█░██░█░░█░██░█░░█░██░ │
└────────────────────────┘          └────────────────────────┘
  Private work invisible              Real activity visible

Key Features

• No exposed code: Maintains privacy by only reflecting commit timestamps.
• Comprehensive tracking: Monitors commits, pull requests, reviews, and issues using GitHub API.
• Automation ready: Set it up to run daily, ensuring up-to-date reflection of work contributions.

Configuration

The setup requires a few environment variables to be defined:

export WORK_DIR="$HOME/work"                          # Directory with your work repos
export MIRROR_DIR="$HOME/mirror"                      # Mirror repo from Step 2
export EMAILS="you@company.com,personal@gmail.com"    # Your git email(s)
export REMOTE_PREFIX="git@github.com:your-company/"   # Only sync repos matching this

How It Works

1. Discover work repositories in the specified directory.
2. Cache them as bare clones to retain only commit history.
3. Extract commit timestamps associated with specified email addresses.
4. Optionally fetch additional timestamps for pull requests and issues.
5. Create empty commits in the public mirror repo corresponding to these timestamps and push them.

FAQs

• Is any code exposed? No, only timestamps are mirrored; the commits are void of actual content.

• Can contributions be backfilled? Yes, adjust the configuration to reflect contributions from earlier dates.

• Will this affect my private repos? No modifications are made to the working directories of private repositories.

For a comprehensive guide on setup and troubleshooting, please refer to the project's README file.