Drowning in GitHub notifications? I built a fix
I built GitHub Digest to fix a problem I kept running into: my GitHub notifications were buried in noise, and I couldn't tell what was actually waiting on me. The problem My GitHub notifications were a mess.
I built GitHub Digest to fix a problem I kept running into: my GitHub notifications were buried in noise, and I couldn't tell what was actually waiting on me.
The problem
My GitHub notifications were a mess. Hundreds of them, and I could never tell which ones were waiting on me and which were just noise. A review request would sit under 40 threads I didn't care about.
What I built
GitHub Digest logs you in with GitHub and sorts your notifications into three groups:
- Needs you now: review requests, questions aimed at you, failed builds
- Worth a look today: mentions and comments
- Can wait: everything else
Each thread also gets:
- A short AI-written summary of what it's asking you to do
- A "Why it's here" line, like "Someone needs your review"
- Done and Mute buttons, so a thread you don't care about stays gone
Review requests that sit for 2+ days get a "Waiting" badge.
How it works
- Backend: Node.js and Express
-
Login: GitHub OAuth. It only asks for
read:userandnotifications, never access to your code - Database: Turso (hosted SQLite). Access tokens are encrypted before they're stored
- AI summaries: Google Gemini, for your 20 most urgent threads. Only the title, type, reason and repo name are sent, never the thread contents
- Hosting: Render
What I learned
- Getting OAuth, sessions and a database working together taught me more than any tutorial.
- A bug that only showed up on the live site (a wrongly named environment variable) took me hours to find. Check your deploy logs first.
- Someone on Reddit told me a priority label is easier to trust when it explains itself. I added the "Why it's here" line the same day.
What's next
- Letting users correct a priority when it's wrong
- Daily email digests (the code is in, but I haven't turned it on yet)
It's free while I build it. Try it here: https://githubdigest.space
I'm building this solo and would love honest feedback. What's confusing, what's missing, and what would make you actually use it?
Originally published by Dev.to AI. Aggregated on AIWithGhost for educational purposes โ full credit and traffic to the original publisher.