Commit Explorer

A terminal UI for exploring git repository history. Clones repositories directly via the git protocol (no REST API calls) and renders the commit graph exactly as git log --graph.

┌─ Toolbar ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ [Provider ▾]  [owner/repo                    ]  [Load]         │
├─ Commit list (resizable) ──────┬──┬─ Detail ───────────────────┤
│ * feat: add login  abc1234 …   │  │ [Open in browser]          │
│ │                              │  │                            │
│ * fix: null check  def5678 …   │  │ SHA     abc1234...         │
│ ├─╮ Merge branch 'feat'        │  │ Author  Jane Doe           │
│ │ │                            │  │ Date    2026-03-10         │
│ [Load more ↓]                  │  │                            │
│                                │  │ M src/foo.py               │
└────────────────────────────────┴──┴────────────────────────────┘

Quick Start

uvx --from git+https://github.com/locchh/commit-explorer commit-explorer textualize/textual

Or clone and run locally:

git clone https://github.com/locchh/commit-explorer
cd commit-explorer
uv sync
uv run commit-explorer textualize/textual

Or:

GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=1 uvx --from git+https://github.com/locchh/commit-explorer commit-explorer textualize/textual

Usage

uv run commit-explorer                          # open the UI, enter repo manually
uv run commit-explorer owner/repo               # pre-load a repository
uv run commit-explorer owner/repo --depth 100   # limit to last 100 commits
uv run commit-explorer owner/repo --export      # print graph to stdout and exit

Keyboard shortcuts: r reload · n next page · q quit

Resize panels by dragging the vertical divider between the commit list and detail view.

Open in browser — select a commit and click the button in the top-right to open it on the provider's website.

How it works

1. Clone — uses Dulwich to bare-clone the repository with filter=blob:none (commits and trees only, no file contents). Fast even for large repos.
2. Graph — runs git log --graph --color=always on the local clone. The output is parsed into colored Rich Text objects for display in the TUI.
3. Detail — file changes are computed via Dulwich tree diffs on demand when a commit is selected.

Requires git to be installed on the system (used for graph rendering only).

Providers

Select the provider from the dropdown, then enter owner/repo and press Load.

Provider	Input format	Auth env var
GitHub	owner/repo	GITHUB_TOKEN
GitLab	owner/repo	GITLAB_TOKEN
Azure DevOps	project/repo	AZURE_DEVOPS_TOKEN, AZURE_DEVOPS_ORG

Tokens are optional but recommended to avoid rate limits on clone URLs. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your tokens:

cp .env.example .env

Self-hosted GitLab

Set GITLAB_URL in .env to your instance URL:

GITLAB_URL=https://gitlab.mycompany.com

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• uv
• git (system install)

Related

• Dulwich — pure-Python git implementation used for cloning
• Textual — TUI framework
• Rich — text formatting and ANSI parsing
• urllib3 — HTTP client used for API requests

License

MIT