---
title: "Contributor Graphs"
description: "A command-line tool that renders contributor timelines for any git or GitHub repository, as a publication-ready SVG and a self-contained interactive HTML page."
url: "https://phil.ewels.co.uk/projects/contributor-graphs"
site: "phil.ewels.co.uk"
author: "Phil Ewels"
section: "Projects"
group: "Personal projects"
website: "https://ewels.github.io/contributor-graphs/"
github: "https://github.com/ewels/contributor-graphs"
---

# Contributor Graphs

> A command-line tool that renders contributor timelines for any git or GitHub repository, as a publication-ready SVG and a self-contained interactive HTML page.

[**Contributor Graphs**](https://ewels.github.io/contributor-graphs/) ([ewels/contributor-graphs](https://github.com/ewels/contributor-graphs)) is a command-line tool that renders contributor timelines for any git or GitHub repository. A single run produces two files: a publication-ready SVG for embedding, and a self-contained interactive HTML page.

The x-axis is time, from a project's first commit to today; each row is a contributor. Bars are shaded by monthly commit activity, so it's easy to see who was active when and how a project grew over the years.

<video
  src="/images/projects/contributor-graphs_demo.mp4"
  poster="/images/projects/contributor-graphs_screenshot.png"
  autoplay
  loop
  muted
  playsinline
  controls
  class="w-full rounded-lg shadow-md"
>
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</video>

## Features

- **Works with anything.** A local path, a GitHub slug (`nf-core/rnaseq`), any git URL, or a bare owner that expands to all of its repositories.
- **Many repos, one timeline.** Pool the histories of as many repos and whole orgs as you like into a single chart, with commits shared across them deduplicated by SHA.
- **GitHub enrichment.** Resolves real names, usernames and avatars via the GitHub API, using your `gh` CLI token automatically to dodge rate limits.
- **Identity merging.** Folds together the many name and email spellings a single person accumulates over the years, with a manual override for the stragglers.
- **Affiliation grouping.** Auto-detects organisations from GitHub profiles and colours by them, with an option to collapse the chart to one row per affiliation and a curation file for time-bounded affiliations.
- **Interactive HTML.** Search, sort, filter, drag-to-zoom, hover for detail, light / dark / Wikipedia themes, and SVG/PNG export — all embedded in one file, no server needed.
- **One binary.** A single Rust binary with no runtime to install, plus Cargo and Docker distributions.

Try it out and browse live examples in the [documentation](https://ewels.github.io/contributor-graphs/).

Find the latest release and source code on [GitHub](https://github.com/ewels/contributor-graphs).

---

From the personal website of Phil Ewels, a software developer and bioinformatician in Stockholm, Sweden: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/
The whole site as Markdown: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/llms.txt