Commitment Issues: A Tool That Analyzes and 'Buries' Unfinished GitHub Repos

A developer has created a web tool called Commitment Issues that analyzes GitHub repositories to determine if they're effectively dead projects, then generates a humorous 'burial' certificate for them. The tool is built on heuristics rather than machine learning.

How It Works

Users paste a GitHub repository URL into the tool, which then:

• Analyzes repository signals including commit frequency, last activity, and stars vs momentum
• Infers a likely "cause of death" for the project
• Generates a high-resolution death certificate
• Pulls the repository's "last words" from the final commit message

Development Process with Claude

The developer used Claude to:

• Explore different heuristics including time since last commit vs activity decay vs repository size
• Prototype the "death classification" logic before implementing it
• Debug inconsistent GitHub API responses, especially around forks and archived repositories
• Iterate on the tone so the output didn't feel generic or overfitted

Key Insights

The developer noted that Claude made it faster to test different approaches and edge cases without overengineering the solution. The "last words" feature proved particularly insightful, as many repositories end with commit messages like "fix later," "temporary hack," or "final commit before rewrite."

Availability

The tool is free to try at https://commitmentissues.dev/ with source code available at https://github.com/dotsystemsdevs/commitmentissues.