Git Painter

Turn any image into your GitHub contribution graph.

Upload a photo, adjust how it looks on the grid, preview the resulting coverage, and download a bash script that creates backdated git commits to paint the image on your GitHub profile.

How it works

1. Open index.html in your browser
2. Pick a mode:
   • Image — drop a photo, logo, or pixel art
   • Text — type short bitmap-style text directly in the app
   • Preset — choose a ready-made icon like heart, moon, cat, arrow, rocket, tree, or coffee
   • Draw — stamp presets and paint the grid by hand with contribution levels 0-4
3. Use the controls to adjust how it maps to the 52×7 contribution grid:
   • Zoom — scale the image up/down within the grid
   • Position X/Y — move it around
   • Threshold — control how aggressively light/dark maps to commit levels
   • Invert — flip light and dark
   • Text Style — choose between Pixel, Bold, and Slanted
   • Text Scale / Letter spacing — tune text layout for the narrow grid
4. Pick a target year and enter your repo URL
5. Review the preview stats:
   • Total commits — estimated number of commits the script will create
   • Active days — days with one or more commits
   • Coverage — percentage of dated cells used in the year
6. Click Download git-painter.sh
7. Run the script — it creates a repo with backdated commits that paint your image

Prerequisites

• An empty GitHub repo (no README, no .gitignore)
• The repo must not be a fork
• main must be the default branch
• git 2.28+ and bash
• git config user.name and git config user.email must be set before running the generated script

Usage

chmod +x git-painter.sh
./git-painter.sh

The script creates a local repo (git-painter-art/), makes all the commits, and pushes to your repo. If you enable overwrite in the UI, the generated script defaults to FORCE_PUSH=true and asks for confirmation before replacing remote history.

Accepted repo URL formats:

• https://github.com/user/repo.git
• https://github.com/user/repo
• git@github.com:user/repo.git

How the colors work

GitHub's contribution graph has 5 levels (empty → dark green). The tool maps image brightness to commit counts:

Level	Color	Commits
0	Empty	0
1	Light green	1
2	Medium green	~25% of max
3	Dark green	~50% of max
4	Darkest green	max (default 20)

You can adjust "Max commits" to control the intensity.

Improvements in this version

• Better validation for repository URLs before download
• Clear status messages for invalid input or image load errors
• Preview stats for commits, active days, and yearly coverage
• Generated script now checks for missing git identity
• FORCE_PUSH=true now also recreates the local working directory instead of showing a misleading error
• Added explicit overwrite/force-push control in the UI with confirmation in the generated script
• Added Text mode with built-in bitmap lettering and three styles: Pixel, Bold, and Slanted
• Added a separate Preset mode with ready-made shapes: Heart, Star, Smiley, Lightning, Moon, Check, Arrow, Diamond, Cat, Rocket, Crown, Flame, Sun, Tree, and Coffee
• Added visible preset cards/gallery for quicker preset picking
• Fixed preset rendering by switching presets to hand-tuned 7-row graph motifs instead of scaling larger source art
• Updated preset gallery cards so they match the exact preset that appears in the contribution preview
• Added Draw mode with manual painting, brush levels 0-4, drag-to-draw, one-click Fill, Undo, Redo, Line, Mirror, clear canvas, and preset stamping so you can place multiple motifs and draw over them

Tech

Single index.html file. No dependencies. No build step. No server. Just open it in a browser.