If you’re a solo developer or a small team lead, the daily standup is a necessary evil. But writing an update by hand every morning is a waste of time—especially when the data already exists in your code repository.
This is a classic problem that indie hackers face: we want to keep stakeholders informed, but we don’t want to become administrators. The solution is to automate the boring part. In this post, I’ll show you how to build a simple script that pulls your GitHub commits and creates a readable summary.
## Why automate?
First, consider the cost. If you spend just five minutes a day writing a standup, that’s over 20 hours a year. For a founder, that’s time you could spend building features or talking to users. Automating this task is a no-brainer, and it’s easier than you think.
## The script
We’ll use Python and the GitHub API. The script will fetch all commits from the last 24 hours, group them by repository, and generate a markdown list. Then it sends that list to your email via a simple SMTP call.
Here’s a simplified version:
“`python
import requests
import smtplib
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
# GitHub API endpoint
yesterday = (datetime.now() – timedelta(days=1)).isoformat()
url = f”https://api.github.com/repos/yourname/yourrepo/commits?since={yesterday}”
# Fetch commits
response = requests.get(url, headers={“Authorization”: “token YOUR_GITHUB_TOKEN”})
commits = response.json()
# Build summary
text = “Here’s what I worked on yesterday:nn”
for commit in commits:
text += f”- {commit[‘commit’][‘message’]}n”
# Send email
# (SMTP setup omitted for brevity)
“`
Of course, you can adapt this to include PRs, issues, or even your calendar events. The key is to make it yours.
## Setting it up
Create a free GitHub token with read-only access to your repos. Then set up an SMTP client—if you use Gmail, you can generate an app password. Save the script on a server or your local machine, and schedule it with cron (if on Linux/macOS) or Task Scheduler (if on Windows).
For example, in cron, add this line:
“`
0 9 * * * /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/standup.py
“`
This runs the script every day at 9 AM. That’s it.
## Real-world usage
I’ve been using this for three months now. My team gets a digest every morning without me thinking about it. They appreciate the consistency, and I reclaim those five minutes for deep work.
## Ready-made alternative
If you don’t want to write this from scratch, I’ve packaged this exact script—with clear comments and configuration files—into a ready-to-run script in our library. You can grab it and have it working in under 10 minutes.
Automation isn’t just for big companies. Even as a solo founder, you have repetitive tasks that eat your day. This standup script is a simple start. The payoff is immediate, and you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.