[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a tool to find devs based on code, ...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: I built a tool to find devs based on code, not LinkedIn
titles
Hey HN After years working in software engineering and helping
with hiring, I noticed a frustrating pattern: Companies often rely
on resumes and LinkedIn titles to find developers instead of
looking at what they've actually built. So I built GitMatcher. It
analyzes GitHub profiles to surface developers based on: Their
public repos Commit history Originality and usefulness of code
Patterns that show consistency and real skill No keywords. No job
titles. Just code. GitMatcher is useful if you're: - A recruiter
tired of resume roulette - A founder looking for a technical co-
founder - An OSS maintainer searching for genuine contributors
It's still early, so I'd love your feedback especially around what
signals you'd care about most when discovering devs.
Author : NabilChiheb
Score : 76 points
Date : 2025-04-08 13:07 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gitmatcher.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gitmatcher.com)
| secondcoming wrote:
| This will completely rule out people who cannot contribute to
| personal GH repos for legal reasons.
|
| It can also be gamed by just filling your repo with all sorts of
| stuff pulled from elsewhere.
| NabilChiheb wrote:
| Just to clarify, GitMatcher is primarily designed for the
| sourcing stage of recruitment -- helping recruiters and hiring
| managers discover devs based on actual contributions rather
| than resumes or LinkedIn profiles.
|
| It's not meant to be the only tool in the hiring process, but
| rather to help make the first step more data-driven.
|
| I appreciate your thoughts -- it helps make GitMatcher better.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Just to clarify, GitMatcher is primarily designed for the
| sourcing stage of recruitment -- helping recruiters and
| hiring managers discover devs based on actual contributions
| rather than resumes or LinkedIn profiles.
|
| Why would Github commits more significant when discovering
| people than LinkedIn CVS?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| One contributes to GH is more-often tech or projects you're
| interest in, whilst a resume is going to be the alphabet
| soup of all tech you know.
|
| HN is doing a good job of complaining about all the edge
| cases where this won't work because most of us don't
| contribute high-quality, novel work to GH. For example, for
| me, my recent GH contributions are for an ancient video
| game in a niche language I've never used elsewhere and my
| location isn't even exposed. So I won't show up. Boo hoo.
|
| It's still a neat idea.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Or just AI-generate working code and fluff your public repos
| with that.
| fweddi wrote:
| Could this work the other way round? For developers to look for
| companies?
| NabilChiheb wrote:
| that's actually our next step! i'm exploring ways to match
| developers with companies based on shared values, tech stacks,
| and project interests
| cbarrick wrote:
| My public repos on GitHub are not a good way to judge me as a
| candidate. Not even close.
|
| Frankly, I don't have much time to contribute to open source
| these days. I send a PR maybe once a year.
|
| Almost everything on my profile is from my university days, and
| none of it is related to my career specialty (ML SRE).
|
| And my employer asks me to fill out a form before I publish
| personal projects, so that they can be sure it is unrelated to my
| job (and thus that they do not have a patent or copyright claim
| over the code). This means most of my weekend projects simply
| aren't public, because I can't be bothered to do the paperwork.
|
| LinkedIn, on the other hand, clearly shows where I've worked and
| what I've worked on. It's a much more accurate resume for me that
| GitHub.
| NabilChiheb wrote:
| I completely understand your situation. GitHub isn't the
| perfect fit for everyone, especially for those in specialized
| roles like ML SRE
|
| GitMatcher is primarily aimed at the sourcing stage, where
| recruiters can find devs based on their actual code
| contributions. But I agree, it's not a one-size-fits-all
| solution -- it's not meant to replace LinkedIn or fully capture
| your career.
| ska wrote:
| I think the problem runs deeper than that. What you've done
| is an interesting tool for finding out more about a
| relatively small slice of developers.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Then clearly you would be ranked very low by something like
| this. I think that is the whole point of this: tell the people
| who have solid commit history from those who don't.
| bpshaver wrote:
| But the ranking is not reflective of actual skills. That's
| the critique. Aside from very frequent open source
| contributors (and I think these people are the minority of
| devs), devs will tend to be "profiled" by this tool according
| to the dot scripts, university projects, Advent of Code, or
| other half-hearted projects they happen to have put on their
| Github. (Maybe I'm just projecting...)
|
| The issue isn't that not everyone has a Github presence, the
| issue is that for most people their Github presence is
| somewhat unrepresentative of their actual job skills.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| It is one dimension of many showing amounts of practice. I
| understand why that makes people sad, but that sadness just
| feels narcissistic.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I might be interested on people who can help me solve my
| particular problem. Those people might not be the same who
| have lots of commits on Github.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Then, logically, you would not hire them solely based on
| this one tool.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Same here. I don't care to publish my personal projects on
| Github and my work projects aren't there for obvious reasons.
| grayhatter wrote:
| I think a tool like this would be targeted more towards
| eliminating false positives, rather than eliminating false
| negatives.
|
| I think this tool as a whole is probably an awful way to judge
| a candidate. But that's not really the point. The point is to
| find additional candidates with a low false negative rate.
|
| E.g. over the past year I've written tens of thousands of lines
| of zig code. But that's not on my resume nor my LinkedIn. this
| would allow someone to include me. Is the code good, or am I a
| good candidate? Impossible to tell... Ah, but now you have
| heard of me! :D
|
| There's more fluff on the page, but it's just fluff, and safe
| to ignore.
|
| > And my employer asks me to fill out a form before I publish
| personal projects, so that they can be sure it is unrelated to
| my job (and thus that they do not have a patent or copyright
| claim over the code). This means most of my weekend projects
| simply aren't public, because I can't be bothered to do the
| paperwork.
|
| Your employer is bad and they should feel bad! If you have the
| option you should consider changing to an employer less willing
| to make the world worse... or maybe a jurisdiction where that
| toxicity is unenforceable.
| em-bee wrote:
| _over the past year I 've written tens of thousands of lines
| of zig code. But that's not on my resume_
|
| why not?
|
| i have included every significant contribution to any
| project, whether it is paid or not on my CV. why would i
| leave that out? it's experience. only code that i write for
| my own use and don't publish may not be worth to be listed
| slumbering wrote:
| Yes, I'm in the same situation. The majority of my work is on
| private repositories, even though I've contributed to public
| repositories for many years. This tool wouldn't accurately
| reflect my current skills.
| mtlynch wrote:
| This is an interesting idea, but it didn't work for me. I tried
| "Zig developer" and it showed results that hadn't done much Zig
| work recently.
|
| Developers known for their zig work like mitchellh, matklad, and
| Jarred-Sumner weren't in the results at all.
| NabilChiheb wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback will take a look? are you looking for
| zig developer? or you were just testing?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Just testing.
| donatj wrote:
| I updated my location and it updated seemingly instantly. Are you
| doing API calls in real time or did I just happen to get lucky?
| NabilChiheb wrote:
| I'm doing real-time calls, but there's a one-hour query-based
| cache
| austin-cheney wrote:
| When I search the results are not quite what I would expect. I
| have just under 10,000 commits in TypeScript language and my
| location is listed as Dallas/Fort Worth.
|
| When I search for TypeScript with location Fort Worth there is
| only one result. When I change the location to Dallas there are
| 10 results. Search cannot resolve results for Dallas/Fort Worth
| with any combination of white space.
|
| As a bonus candidate search tools never include a "negative
| search", as in results to exclude. For example: TypeScript, but
| not React.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| I have to ask- you're not interested in candidates if they have
| experience in certain frameworks?
| austin-cheney wrote:
| It was just an example, but yes, I would like to disqualify
| results that I don't want. It is just a general feature I
| wish were widely available in many places. If I were looking
| for jobs, for example, I would not want to waste time on that
| which is not relevant or outside my level.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| If you were looking for jobs and had Typescript experience
| but not React experience, then sure, you might want to
| exclude jobs that _require_ React experience.
|
| An employer looking for a candidate has no reason to
| exclude someone with React experience though. If they want
| a candidate with Express.js experience, candidates may
| still have both. They just need the positive search in that
| case.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I think the belief is that they think that knowing some
| framework/language/tool etc. is harmful, i.e a candidate
| not knowing that would be better, has some better habits,
| and so on. I've saw that come up a few times
| austin-cheney wrote:
| > An employer looking for a candidate has no reason to
| exclude someone with React experience though
|
| I completely disagree and you are focusing on a made up
| rhetorical example far too much. There is always benefit
| to more efficiently excluding results you don't want.
| em-bee wrote:
| i'd like to see an example that actually makes sense. the
| only one i can come up with is that i might not want to
| hire people who have more experience with windows than
| with linux. but even in that example people with less
| windows experience would be ok.
|
| if you have a realistic use case please describe it.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Yeah, if you're hiring for a senior-level role, 10 years
| of experience with Linux is 10 years of experience with
| Linux, even if the person _also_ has experience (perhaps
| even more than 10 years) with Windows.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| > i'd like to see an example
|
| Why? You are clearly missing the point and lack
| imagination. Another example won't satisfy you the way
| you think it will.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I wouldn't be interested in someone who can just write some code.
| I would be interested in someone with specific experience working
| on a commercial software product.
|
| Also, while Github is big indeed, most public repositories are
| either concerned with open source software, are of low quality,
| are just cloning other software.
|
| Most developers don't have their work in public git repositories.
| cess11 wrote:
| It surfaces accounts because they've forked repos and done
| nothing or pushed demo applications from tutorials.
| mariocesar wrote:
| When I search for "City, Country," I can find my profile, but
| searching for just "Country" doesn't work.
|
| This is a good idea, but it needs more work on how to tokenize
| and index the profiles. Are you just using the API? or storing
| the profiles? because API for exact matches misses a lot of
| profiles. The location field in GitHub has been always been
| inconsistent, some people use country flag emojis instead of
| names, or just abbreviations like AR, BO, or USA, etc
| dagw wrote:
| I'm finding profiles where the only reference to the thing I was
| searching for (PyTorch in this case) is in their profile text.
| None of their repos or commit history seem to use pytorch. I also
| refuse to believe that there is only one developer using pytorch
| in all of Stockholm.
|
| I love the concept, but it seems to struggle with judging what
| code/text relevant and important
| ge96 wrote:
| What if they just fork a lot of stuff/not change it
|
| I also have a self-updating github readme, it commits everyday
| joeyparsons wrote:
| great concept and something like this is definitely needed, just
| unable to get a good search that demonstrates the power. i would
| keep trying to make this better!
|
| you also might want to check all the links in your footer. all
| the social links are broken and the blog links to some generic
| content.
| jppope wrote:
| I love this! I'm reading through the criticism in the comments
| and I can't help but imagine all of the articles out there
| complaining about how the interview process is broken - sure
| enough even one tool that is slightly different than the standard
| interview process and what do people do? complain about its short
| comings.
|
| Keep it up and iterate! This is a good direction, and it
| certainly is going to be useful for some teams :)
| em-bee wrote:
| the problem with the interview process is that it is unfair,
| not properly capturing the actual qualifications and testing
| the wrong stuff. the complaints here are that this tool does
| not properly capture the actual qualifications either, and
| therefore it suffers from the same problem, just in a different
| way. it may work for a few people, just like the interview
| process works for a few people, and it may work for a few use
| cases (like finding a FOSS developer) but it doesn't provide a
| solution for the interview problem itself.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| How do you work around people just pushing clones of existing
| software to their repos?
| kortilla wrote:
| The obvious problem here is the vast majority of software
| professionals in the US are not working on open source projects.
| So this tool is probably only useful if you're looking for an
| open source dev or someone junior trying to break into the
| industry.
|
| Basically all of the major tech companies have boilerplate hoops
| you need to jump through to make open source contributions on the
| side, let alone open source anything major internally.
| elpakal wrote:
| I agree with most of the sentiment here, and have actually
| considered building something like this myself. I think the
| biggest need is to find a way to expose contributions to private
| repositories somehow--right now, this assumes you are your public
| commits, which isn't true for people spending the majority of
| their time inside of private repos.
|
| I know the LinkedIn API is limited but it would also be cool to
| see a social graph of contributors you have worked with somehow.
| Finding the people, their titles, and companies would be valuable
| to see where you level (just imho).
| clvx wrote:
| I believe github used to have a service like this but they shut
| it down. I wish Gitlab and Github provide a paid api with this
| metadata so talent sources can reach put people based on
| contribution and experience.
| welder wrote:
| Similar to what I'm doing with https://wonderful.dev (example dev
| profile: https://wonderful.dev/alan) where profiles can't be
| edited, devs can only connect their GitHub, StackOverflow, etc.
| and we fill in the profile for them with real data. No more fake
| Linkedin skills.
|
| This difference here is wonderful.dev adds points to skills based
| on repo stars. We take a dev's contributions to a repo, times
| that repo's stars, then assign those points to the repo's
| languages on the dev's profile. It's a proxy for impact by
| language.
| jjmarr wrote:
| It's already flagged me as a tech influencer because I mostly
| make PRs to existing projects, which doesn't seem to be pulled
| into the AI summary.
|
| I love the concept though. Banning people from writing their
| own profiles makes it feel more objective/accurate even when
| it's not.
| giantg2 wrote:
| One problem with this is my day job work (99.9% of my
| experience) isn't publicly posted and wouldn't be captured in
| the profile. The nature of my personal projects are
| significantly different than my job and result in different
| technologies being used to better fit the use case. Also, most
| of my personal projects are private and would be left out.
|
| I guess this is just one more thing I feel is a barrier to
| equitable evaluation and hiring practices.
| welder wrote:
| When connecting GitHub, it asks you to select the repos you
| want wonderful.dev to see. You can select private repos there
| too.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Depends on how private you want them to be.
| welder wrote:
| Yes, the names and language stats are seen but the
| integration scope we use doesn't have permission to read
| the repo source code.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I keep trying to find myself: https://github.com/GWBasic
|
| C# / Cape Cod: Nothing
|
| Pogon / Cape Cod: Nothing
| jstrieb wrote:
| Small feedback: I would like to be able to enter my own profile
| to see how I will appear on the site. It would also be nice to
| know what searches my profile would be most likely to pop up for.
| jstrieb wrote:
| Okay I was able to find myself, but only by searching for the
| exact text in my GitHub bio. Nothing related to any of my repos
| surfaced my profile.
| i-use-nixos-btw wrote:
| Honestly, I'm against this.
|
| As soon as that is added, people will start to try to optimise
| their profiles to place them high in the list on certain
| things, rendering the tool pretty much useless.
|
| The talent people want to find in the talent that doesn't do
| everything in its power to say "hey, look at me, I'm talent",
| but just... well... does things.
| pointlessone wrote:
| GitHub profile is not a CV.
|
| A few things that immediately jumped at me:
|
| - Not all code is on GitHub and not all of it is public. Recently
| I see more and more code moving elsewhere: GitLab (both managed
| and self-hosted), Codeberg, Forgejo instances.
|
| - Even the code that is on GH might live outside of personal
| profile. Many notable FLOSS projects have their own organisations
| on GH. People who produce a lot of that code have direct commit
| access and don't keep forks on their profiles. You're missing all
| of the most prolific developers here.
|
| - Location field in a GH profile is full of jokes. Search for
| "space", "internet", "/dev/null", etc.
|
| - It picks top repos weirdly. I tried to find my profile. It
| picked one repo that is not in my profile and wasn't there
| probably for a long time, and another that is a public archive
| and hasn't been updated since 2017. Both are forks with minimal
| contributions on my part. I have pinned repos in my profile that
| are much fresher and, arguably, more relevant.
|
| But the project looks sleek. Probably helpful in addition to
| Linkedin and whatever to uncover more potential candidates. I'm
| glad it works for you.
| evanelias wrote:
| Just a heads-up, the site doesn't render in a usable way in
| FireFox.
| nine_k wrote:
| @NabilChiheb: Please note that your CSS URL is currently an
| infinite redirection loop: $ curl -D -
| 'https://gitmatcher.com/assets/index-CKQ82hdV.css' HTTP/2
| 301 date: Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:58:51 GMT location:
| https://gitmatcher.com/assets/index-CKQ82hdV.css ...
| jdowner wrote:
| All of the links under "product" seem to be relative to whatever
| the current page is. That only works on the front page.
| wavemode wrote:
| Who says these people are even looking for work?
| djoldman wrote:
| Good point.
|
| Although almost everyone has a price or list of things they
| would change about their current job.
| mandeepj wrote:
| How many great devs are keeping their GH profile active to match
| your search patterns?
| juancn wrote:
| Most of my code and the best of my work is owned by somebody
| else.
|
| I cannot put it in github even if I wanted to since I was
| handsomely paid for it, so your tool can never find me.
|
| This is true for some of the best devs for hire, in any case, the
| best way to find good candidate leads are networking and
| referrals.
| efficax wrote:
| Neat idea, but the execution seems terrible. I tried to find my
| coworkers based on specific searches and they never show up.
| mirrorlake wrote:
| I saw profiles across different searches which had no contact
| info listed, seems like it isn't really designed to be a hiring
| tool.
|
| I'm very skeptical of the claim that you'll be able to identify
| people by "usefulness of code", whatever that means.
| alexeiz wrote:
| Found whopping 10 people in NYC with Python and JavaScript
| experience.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-08 23:02 UTC)