{
  "id": 17649308,
  "title": "Rest in Repo: a graveyard for your dead side projects, powered by local Gemma",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/01/rest-in-repo-a-graveyard-for-your-dead-side-projects-powered-by-local",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-01T18:03:08.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/mayank_sharma_814005f2650/rest-in-repo-a-graveyard-for-your-dead-side-projects-powered-by-local-gemma-6go"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Every developer harbors a folder filled with side projects that once garnered a brief burst of enthusiasm but have since faded away. Examples include todo-app, that-chat-thing, and portfolio-v3. Rest in Repo transforms this disorganized collection into a tangible graveyard, an elegantly designed static HTML page where each deceased project is given a virtual tombstone, its cause of death, and a eulogy penned by a local Gemma model. Crucially, no sensitive data leaves your computer during this process. The project's repository can be accessed at https://github.com/mayankinkk/rest-in-repo.\n\nThe creators of Rest in Repo made a deliberate choice to ensure that the AI model solely generates the narrative surrounding each project's demise, never determining the reasons behind it. To achieve this, the model receives deterministic rules as input, analyzing the project's git history and categorizing it accordingly. For instance, if a project has a lifespan of three days, with only three commits made on a weekend, the model classifies it as a 'weekend_hack' with appropriate reasons and a medium intensity rating. Similarly, projects with a lifespan of seven days and eight commits might be labeled as 'hackathon_orphan' with a medium rating.\n\nThe model's sole responsibility is to transform these facts into a poignant eulogy. However, it is strictly prohibited from making any numerical claims. To tackle this issue, a whitelist check is implemented, ensuring that only allowed numbers, such as commit_count, lifespan_days, and file_count, are present in the final output. If any fabricated numbers are detected, the model is prompted to regenerate its response until it complies with the guidelines. The MODEL_COMPARISON.md file provides comprehensive details on this process.\n\nEach tombstone on the graveyard page showcases the project's cause of death, along with additional contextual information. This includes the project's final commit message, served as a eulogy, and a visual representation of its commit activity over time. The page also features badges, such as 'night owl' and 'almost quit once', highlighting notable patterns in the project's development. Furthermore, the tool provides useful buttons that offer more insights into the project, like a séance displaying the last diff and a heatmap of commit activity, a resurrection guide offering concrete steps to revive the project, and an option to export the page as a PNG image for easy sharing.",
  "summary": "Every developer has the same folder: a graveyard of side projects that got one weekend of energy and then vanished. todo-app , that-chat-thing , portfolio-v3 . You open it, feel a small pang of guilt, and close it. Rest in Repo turns that folder into an actual graveyard — one spooky static HTML page where each dead project gets a tombstone, a cause of death, and a eulogy written by a local Gemma…",
  "key_points": [
    "Rest in Repo creates static HTML graveyard for dead side projects",
    "AI model generates eulogies without sensitive data leaving computer",
    "Model categorizes projects by git history, avoids numerical claims"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}