Manny's Systems Studio

live

RepoGarden

Developer tools
Preview unavailable Project record remains available below. RepoGarden terminal habitat preview showing local repositories as a pixel garden.
Public RepoGarden preview

A little local habitat where your repos live.

Product, design, and engineering · 2026

A local-first terminal app that turns the repositories on a machine into a deterministic pixel habitat, with rooms, journal entries, repo notes, recent commits, and optional GitHub discovery.

Public source, the verified npm 0.9.4 package, and preview media are linked.

Read case study brief · what i owned · key decisions · what was delivered · evidence · implementation

The problem

Side projects accumulate faster than context. Conventional dashboards add maintenance and guilt when a solo builder really needs to remember where work stopped and choose one small next move.

What I owned

  • Product direction, interaction design, visual system, public documentation, packaging, and TypeScript implementation.
  • A public MIT-licensed repository with an inspectable product rationale, architecture, tests, and release history.

Key decisions

  • Replaced a heavier Tauri and Pixi desktop prototype with a terminal-native Node and Ink product while preserving the spatial habitat idea.
  • Generate stable creatures deterministically from repository identity instead of maintaining an asset pack.
  • Use soft state cues without productivity scores, punishment, surveillance framing, or fake certainty.
  • Keep notes and memory in inspectable local JSON and Markdown files without writing to watched repositories.

What was delivered

  • Built as a single-process Node CLI with React 19 and Ink 7 instead of a hosted dashboard.
  • Scans configured local roots, persists state in ~/.repogarden, and never writes to the watched repositories.
  • Includes garden, room, journal, and per-repo workbench views with reduced-motion support.

Evidence

  • Public MIT-licensed source exposes the complete implementation, product vision, privacy model, tests, and release history.
  • Version 0.9.4 is publicly downloadable as the @outsideheaven/repogarden CLI.
  • Approved preview and demo media show the terminal habitat, first-run flow, and repository workbench.

Implementation

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Ink
  • CLI