🦀 Rusty Commit Saver

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✨ A Rust flake to automatically log al Git commits into Obsidian. ✨

Rusty Commit Saver captures each commit’s:

• Timestamp
• Commit message
• Repository URL
• Branch name
• Commit hash

and appends it to a dated diary entry in your Wiki directory.

Table of Contents:

• 🚀 Features
• 📦 Installation
• 🛞 Usage
• 🛠️ Configuration
• 📈 Roadmap & Improvements
• 💖 Contributing

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Features 🚀

• Automatic diary entry creation with YAML frontmatter and table header
• Timestamped commit rows formatted for Obsidian
• Customizable storage path under 📅 Diaries/0. Commits/YYYY/MM-MMMM/
• A git log backstop (--reconcile) that journals commits made on a machine with no vault mounted, so a row is late rather than lost — for the history HEAD reaches
• Preconfigured hooks (via Nix + pre-commit) to ensure code quality

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Installation 📦

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/chess-seventh/rusty-commit-saver.git
   cd rusty-commit-saver

2. Enter the Nix development shell

   devenv shell

3. Build the project

   cargo build --release

4. (Optional) Install the binary to your PATH

   cargo install --path .

Building and testing

devenv shell -- cargo test               # the whole suite
devenv shell -- cargo clippy --all-targets
devenv shell -- pre-check                # linters + tests + build

devenv.nix needs nothing outside the repository. It enriches the shell with the shared modules from the devenv_shared checkout when the machine has one — at ~/src/claude-src/repos/devenv_shared, or at the older ~/devenv_shared — and evaluates fine without it, which is what a fresh box and a CI runner get. Everything the commands above need (the Rust toolchain, cargo-nextest/cargo-shear/cargo-llvm-cov, treefmt and its formatters) is declared in devenv.nix itself, so this gate is reachable anywhere.

The repository's own flake is self-contained too, so nix develop --command cargo test also works on any machine with Nix. Note that its rustfmt defaults to a different style edition — format with cargo fmt -- --style-edition=2024 there, or it will reflow files it should leave alone.

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Usage 🛞

Simply commit as usual. The hooks will:

1. Run linters (clippy, rustfmt, etc.) inside the Nix shell — pre-commit
2. Invoke Rusty Commit Saver to log the commit — post-commit, once the commit exists, which is why nothing this tool does can cost you a commit

If you prefer manual invocation:

rusty-commit-saver

Your commit will be appended to, where Obsidian should be:

~/Documents/Wiki/📅 Diaries/0. Commits/YYYY/MM-MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD.md

Catching up: the git log backstop

The hook can only journal on a machine that mounts the vault. Everywhere else the row is lost, and once the config is present on those machines it is lost silently — a journal that quietly stops looks exactly like a quiet week.

--reconcile is the other half: it reads the history each checkout's HEAD can reach and appends whatever row the day note is missing. It needs no network and no broker, so it works on the machine where the vault actually lives, whenever you run it.

HEAD-reachable is narrower than "the repository", and the difference bites. Commits sitting on a branch that is not the checkout's current HEAD are not journalled, and if that branch is later squash-merged they never become reachable at all. If you work in git worktrees, point --reconcile at each worktree rather than only at the main clone.

# everything each of these checkouts can reach from its own HEAD
rusty-commit-saver --reconcile ~/src/one --reconcile ~/src/two

# just the recent past, for a scheduled run
rusty-commit-saver --reconcile ~/src/one --since 2026-08-01

Each repository gets one line on stdout, so a scheduled run that appended nothing still says so:

rusty-commit-saver: one: 412 scanned, 3 appended, 409 already present
rusty-commit-saver: claude-src: excluded

What it will and will not do:

• It only appends. A row already in a note is never rewritten, reordered or reformatted. Your day notes are yours.
• A row goes in the note for the commit's own date, never today's — so a first backfill spreads across the months it actually happened in.
• A row the hook already wrote is recognised, by the commit hash in the last column, and not written twice. Running the pass a second time appends nothing and leaves every note byte-identical.
• The [exclude] list applies here too. An excluded repository is not even walked.
• A repository it cannot open is reported on stderr and skipped, so one broken clone does not stop the other repositories from catching up.
• It ignores the directory you started it in. Unlike the hook, it journals only the repositories you named.

--since takes a date as YYYY-MM-DD. A value it cannot read stops the run and names both what it wanted and what it got, rather than quietly backfilling years of history from a typo in a timer unit.

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Configuration 🛠

• rust-toolchain.toml pins Rust 1.89.0
• devenv.nix provisions Rust, Clippy, rustfmt, and Git hooks
• .pre-commit-config.yaml defines all pre-commit checks
• treefmt.toml configures treefmt and formatters

Runtime config (INI)

Runtime settings live in an INI file at ~/.config/rusty-commit-saver/rusty-commit-saver.ini:

[obsidian]
root_path_dir = ~/Documents/Obsidian
commit_path = Diaries/Commits

[templates]
commit_date_path = %Y/%m-%B/%F.md
commit_datetime = %H:%M:%S

# Optional: repositories to skip, by canonical repo name (comma-separated).
# A commit made in one of these repos writes nothing to the diary.
[exclude]
repos = claude-src

The [exclude] section is optional. Each entry is matched, case-sensitively, against the committing repository's canonical name — taken from its origin remote URL (…/claude-src.git → claude-src), falling back to the working-directory name for a repo with no usable origin. Because the origin is the same from every checkout, one entry covers the main clone and every git worktree of that repo, from any subdirectory.

[obsidian] and [templates] are required; a config missing either one is fatal. Any other section is ignored, with a line on stderr naming it, never fatal. One INI file is shared by every checkout on the machine, so a section written for a newer release must not break a binary that predates it — which is exactly what adding [exclude] did to every checkout older than 4.17.0.

The stderr line matters: a misspelt section ([excludes]) is ignored too, so without it your exclusions would silently stop applying.

Keys work the same way, for the same reason:

• A key this binary does not understand is ignored and named on stderr (ignoring unrecognised config keys [templates] commit_datetimes). It used to be ignored in complete silence, so a typo applied nothing and said nothing.

• The four keys in [obsidian] and [templates] are required, and so is a non-empty value for each — commit_path = counts as missing. Without them there is no destination to write to, and a hook that quietly journals nothing looks exactly like a quiet day, so this one stays fatal. ([exclude] repos is optional, like its section.)

• The two [templates] values must be formats chrono can actually render, and that is checked when the config is read. A bad specifier used to surface from inside the writer as a formatting trait implementation returned an error, naming nothing, after an empty diary file had already been created.

• The fatal message names the config file, the key and its section, plus any unrecognised key in that same section, since a misspelt commit_paths is the usual reason commit_path is missing:

  rusty-commit-saver: /home/you/.config/rusty-commit-saver/rusty-commit-saver.ini:
  missing required key 'commit_path' in section [obsidian];
  unrecognised in [obsidian]: commit_paths
  

None of this can cost you a commit: the tool runs as a post-commit hook, and git ignores that hook's exit status. A config fault costs you the diary entry and prints on stderr; the commit itself always stands.

Checking hook behaviour by hand

tests/hook-gate.sh drives a real commit through a real post-commit hook, in a throwaway repo and vault, and prints what a human would see:

cargo build
./tests/hook-gate.sh good             # journals, says nothing
./tests/hook-gate.sh unknown-key      # journals, names the key on stderr
./tests/hook-gate.sh missing-key      # journals nothing, names file + key
./tests/hook-gate.sh blank-key        # same, for a key with an empty value
./tests/hook-gate.sh bad-format       # same, for a format chrono cannot render
./tests/hook-gate.sh unknown-section  # journals, names the section

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Roadmap & Improvements 📈

There are many enhancements planned:

• Configurable Obsidian path
• Configurable year/day/month on where to save the commit
• Interactive CLI flags and richer metadata (author, files changed)
• Improved error handling and user feedback
• Unit tests and CI pipeline for automated releases

Contributions welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit PRs.

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Contributing 💖

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch
3. Write tests and update README.md
4. Submit a pull request

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License 📄

MIT © 2026 Chess7th