[HN Gopher] Show HN: Gitcasso - Syntax Highlighting and Draft Re...
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       Show HN: Gitcasso - Syntax Highlighting and Draft Recovery for
       GitHub Comments
        
       I built a browser extension called Gitcasso which:  - Adds markdown
       syntax highlighting to GitHub textareas  - Lists every open
       PR/issue tab and any drafts  - (Optional, unimplemented) autosaves
       your comment drafts so you don't lose work  I made it because I was
       impressed by https://overtype.dev/ (a markdown textarea syntax
       highlighter) which went big on here on HN a few weeks ago, and it
       seemed like a perfect fit for a GitHub browser extension. Keeping
       up with changes on upstream GitHub would normally be a pain, but
       with with Playwright and Claude Code it seemed possible for it to
       be nearly automatic, which has turned out to be mostly true!  This
       was the first time where I built a tool, gave the tool to AI, and
       then AI used the tool to make the thing I hoped it would be able to
       make. I'm pretty sold on the general technique...  GitHub repo
       (Apache2-licensed, open source):
       https://github.com/diffplug/gitcasso  Video walkthrough (2 mins of
       the tool, 12 mins of its development tooling):
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm7fVg4DWqk  And a text writeup
       with timestamps to the video walkthrough
       https://nedshed.dev/p/meet-gitcasso
        
       Author : etwigg
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2025-10-10 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | dorianniemiec wrote:
       | The idea seems good - this can make Markdown in the comment
       | editor more readable!
       | 
       | But when I tried your Chrome extension, I found a problem - the
       | comment box became light mode, when GitHub is in dark mode...
       | 
       | I have opened a GitHub issue about this problem.
        
         | etwigg wrote:
         | Agggh! My eyesssss!!! Thanks for creating the issue and posting
         | a screenshot, we will 100% have to fix it!
         | 
         | https://github.com/diffplug/gitcasso/issues/112
        
       | andreynering wrote:
       | For those that don't know, on Settings > Appeaarance there is a
       | setting for "Use a fixed-width (monospace) font when editing
       | Markdown". It's already a good QoL improvements (and it should be
       | the default, honestly).
       | 
       | https://github.com/settings/appearance
        
         | etwigg wrote:
         | At the beginning of Gitcasso, I took a little survey of GitLab,
         | Reddit, ChatGPT, Claude, etc. to see how they were doing their
         | textboxes. Of those I just listed, GitHub is the only one still
         | using a plain textarea, all of the rest have a wysiwyg richtext
         | gizmo (with GitLab and Reddit you can opt-in to markdown).
         | 
         | But by using the same variable-width font that the rendered
         | comment uses, GitHub's default gives you more of a wysiwyg
         | experience than a monospace font does. With syntax-highlighting
         | it's an even more wysiwyg feel, but with absolutely none of the
         | content ambiguity that richtext normally brings with it.
         | 
         | I came away really impressed with GitHub. For any given
         | decision, it's hard to tell if the market victor won because of
         | their good taste or if they won in spite of that particular
         | decision and there was somewhere else where the good decisions
         | were decisive. But as the GitHub issue/PR commenting system
         | stands today, I have a hard time finding much to gripe with
         | (except the missing syntax highlighting, of course).
        
       | DiabloD3 wrote:
       | When is this being added to the Firefox extensions repo?
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-10 23:01 UTC)