beehiivYou post the launch on Tuesday morning. By lunch the repo is open in one tab, Stripe in another and a terminal in a third, and you’re refreshing the star count like it’s a stock price.
The number matters. Having to go and look for it is the problem.
What the GitHub dashboard shows
The GitHub repo source puts a repo’s stars on the board as a number with a line under it. Type owner/name and the form shows the count before you add it. It works for any public repository, yours or anyone else’s, with no account and no token.
Want forks or open issues instead? Paste the repo’s API address, api.github.com/repos/owner/name, into Paste a link. The board offers stars, forks and open issues as one tap each.
Private repos take your own token. Save a fine-grained GitHub token once in Connect and the board shows open issues on any repository that token can read. The token is sealed on the board’s server, never shown again, and only ever sent to api.github.com.
Then there’s the work happening on your own machine. Link your computer with the one-line runner and the Git activity widget lists today’s commits, the branch you’re on and how many files have changes waiting, for the git repos in your project folders. Link a second computer, or a server, with the same line and its commits show up too.
Where the numbers come from
Stars, forks and issues come from GitHub’s public API. The board reads them on its own server while the board is open, and every read adds a point, so the line under your stars grows from the day you add the repo.
Commits come from your machine. The runner reads git in the folders you pick and sends the board the repo names, branches, change counts and today’s commit messages. Your code never leaves your computer.
If a read fails, say GitHub is having a bad hour, the widget keeps the last good number and tells you what went wrong and when. It never fills the gap with a guess.
Why put GitHub on a board
The repo is one tab of five. Revenue lives in Stripe, signups in your database, errors in Sentry. A board puts the star count beside the MRR it’s supposed to turn into, and today’s commits beside the agents writing them.
Start from the Agents template for commits and sessions, or ask your agent to add the repo to the board you already have.