Gitcast

git diff → published post. under 60 seconds.

Gitcast is a privacy-first developer tool that captures your coding session via a global hotkey, reads your local git diff and project context, generates AI-powered social media posts, PR descriptions, and articles, and publishes them without breaking your flow.

Works immediately after installation with zero setup required — Gitcast comes with a built-in shared key.

Features

• Global Hotkey Capture: Press Ctrl+Shift+P or Ctrl+Alt+S anywhere (VS Code, terminal, browser) to instantly capture your screen and local code changes (git diff).
• Privacy-First & Local OCR: Screen text extraction (Tesseract OCR) runs 100% locally on your machine. Sensitive credentials (API keys, secrets, tokens, passwords) are automatically detected and blocked.
• Automated macOS Window Framing: Raw screenshots are automatically wrapped in a sleek macOS-style window frame with traffic light controls and soft drop shadows for social posts.
• Multi-Format AI Generation: Generates distinct content formats simultaneously in under 8 seconds:
  • X (Twitter) Post: High-impact, tech-focused updates with code context.
  • LinkedIn Draft: Structured narrative posts tailored for developer networks.
  • PR Description: Full GitHub/GitLab markdown pull request descriptions (What, Why, How, Testing).
  • Quick Win: Short punchy updates ideal for feature ships.
  • Longform Article: Medium/Substack-ready markdown blog posts.
• Sprint Mode (Deep Work): Silently log multiple code captures throughout a long coding session without popups, then synthesize them into a cohesive multi-step "sprint thread" at the end.
• Smart Vision AI Fallback: If local OCR confidence falls below 60%, Gitcast seamlessly routes the screenshot to Gemini Vision for high-accuracy multimodal reading.
• Interactive Local Dashboard & Review Room: Web UI running locally at http://localhost:8000 with live preview, inline editing, and natural language AI refinement chat.
• 1-Click Publishing & Clipboard Integration: Publish directly to X (Twitter) via API v2 with media upload support, or copy pre-formatted markdown to clipboard.
• Bring Your Own Key (BYOK): Zero setup required out-of-the-box, plus optional BYOK support for Groq, Gemini, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, and Moonshot/Kimi.

Quick Start

Step 1: Install Tesseract OCR

Required for local screenshot text extraction. Runs entirely on your device — your code never leaves your computer without permission.

• macOS:

  brew install tesseract
  

• Linux (Ubuntu/Debian):

  sudo apt install tesseract-ocr
  

• Windows:

  1. Download installer from UB-Mannheim Tesseract Wiki.
  2. Run installer and check "Add to PATH" during installation.
  3. Restart your terminal.

Step 2: Install Gitcast

pip install gitcast

Step 3: Launch

gitcast

The web dashboard opens automatically at http://localhost:8000.

• Press Ctrl+Shift+P or Ctrl+Alt+S from any application to capture screen context and generate your post.
• Or trigger a quick capture directly from your terminal:

  gitcast "just added instant fallback routing for AI models"
  

Step 4: Optional: Add Your Own Key (BYOK)

The built-in shared key has rate limits shared across users. For unlimited personal usage, add your own free key:

gitcast --setup

Or configure keys in the dashboard sidebar under BYOK. Get a free Groq key in 2 minutes at console.groq.com.

Architecture & Flow

  [HotKey / CLI Trigger]  ──> Press Ctrl+Shift+P or run `gitcast "thought"`
           │
           ▼
  [Local Parallel Capture] ──> Capture active screen (mss) + git diff HEAD + project README & stack
           │
           ▼
  [Privacy & OCR Engine]  ──> Tesseract OCR (Local) ──> Scan & block API keys/secrets
           │                                            (If confidence < 60% ──> Gemini Vision)
           ▼
  [AI Provider Routing]   ──> Multi-format parallel completions (Groq / Gemini / OpenRouter)
           │
           ▼
  [Dashboard & Review]    ──> http://localhost:8000 (Inline edit, AI refinement, macOS window framing)
           │
           ▼
  [Publish / Export]      ──> 1-Click X/Twitter API Publish OR Copy to Clipboard

Context Awareness

Gitcast automatically detects project context from your current working directory:

• Reads README.md for project background.
• Scans package.json, requirements.txt, Cargo.toml, go.mod, etc., for main tech stack & language.
• Remembers your Project Narrative (e.g., "Building an open-source observability engine"), ensuring every generated post sounds authentic to what you are creating.

Sprint Mode

For deep work sessions where you do not want to break your flow:

1. Activate Sprint Mode: Toggle Sprint Mode [ON] from the dashboard sidebar or tray icon.
2. Capture Silently: Every Ctrl+Shift+P press logs your screenshot and git diff silently in the background without popups or AI calls.
3. Finish & Synthesize: Toggle Sprint Mode [OFF]. Gitcast synthesizes all logged captures into a single, high-converting 6–7 tweet "sprint thread" covering your entire build arc (the problem, failed attempts, solution, and outcome).

CLI Reference

Privacy & Security

• 100% On-Device OCR: Text from screenshots is extracted locally via Tesseract before any API requests.
• Automated Secret Scanning: Regex scanner screens OCR text for API keys (sk-, gsk_), tokens, passwords, and long hashes, automatically redacting and blocking sensitive captures.
• Automatic Cleanup: Screenshots are encrypted with Fernet locally and auto-cleaned after 24 hours. Declined captures are securely deleted immediately.
• No Background Screen Recording: Gitcast only captures screen data when explicitly triggered by your hotkey or CLI command.

AI Providers & BYOK Priority

Gitcast routes each post format to the optimal provider for performance and output quality:

Key Resolution Priority:

1. Your personal BYOK key (if set via gitcast --setup or saved in ~/.gitcast/.env).
2. Gitcast built-in shared key (fallback).

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python 3.10+, FastAPI, Uvicorn, Pydantic, httpx
• System & Screen: mss, Pillow, pytesseract, pynput, plyer
• AI Engine: Groq, Google Gemini Vision, OpenRouter, Cerebras, DeepSeek
• Publishing: tweepy (Twitter/X API v2), Clipboard / Native Web Compose
• Frontend: Lightweight responsive dashboard (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request or open an Issue on GitHub.

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

Built by Timilehin Agoro (@drizzy765).