GitComment

A comment section for your GitHub profile. Visitors leave you a message using the GitHub account they already have, and it shows up in your profile README.

Comments live in a GitHub Discussion on your profile repository. When someone posts, an Action redraws the board and commits it. No server, no database, no signup, no account to create.

Themes

Four of the nine, at a glance.

notes — the one above. Paper notes, tape, handwriting.

dev

comic

pink

There are five more: win95 (Windows 95 dialogue boxes), drawn, cozy, steam and minimal. The last four are plain README HTML rather than images, so every username in them stays clickable.

Changing theme

Edit .github/gitcomment.yml in your profile repository:

theme: dev
variant: dark

Commit it, then run the workflow once from the Actions tab. That's the whole process.

theme — notes dev pink comic win95 drawn cozy steam minimal

variant — dark light transparent

transparent draws no background and follows whichever GitHub theme the visitor is using. The four HTML themes ignore variant.

All values are lowercase. A wrong one fails the run with a message naming the valid options, and leaves your README untouched.

What it does

• Shows the newest few comments; the rest stay in the Discussion
• Real avatars and profile links
• Nine themes, three variants
• Hide or delete a comment and it disappears on the next run
• Blocklist, and an approval mode where nothing appears until you react to it
• Escapes everything a commenter writes, so nobody can inject markup

Setup

1. Enable Discussions on your profile repository — Settings, Features.

2. Create one Discussion for the comments. Note its number from the URL.

3. Add these two lines to your README where you want the board:

<!-- GITCOMMENT:START -->
<!-- GITCOMMENT:END -->

4. Add .github/workflows/comments.yml:

name: comments

on:
  discussion_comment:
    types: [created, edited, deleted]
  workflow_dispatch:

concurrency:
  group: comments
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  update:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
      discussions: read
    steps:
      - uses: LISK819129/GitComment@v1
        with:
          discussion-number: 1

It has to be on your default branch — GitHub only fires discussion_comment for workflows that live there.

5. Actions tab, run it once by hand. Done.

No actions/checkout step. The Action reads and writes over the API, which also means two people commenting at the same moment can't clobber each other.

Config

All optional, at .github/gitcomment.yml:

title: "Comments"
subtitle: "little messages from people passing by."

theme: notes
variant: dark

max_comments: 6
message_max_length: 240

show_avatar: true
show_date: true

moderation: automatic
blocked_users: []

max_comments is how many are drawn, not how many are kept. Nothing is ever deleted from the Discussion.

Set moderation: approved and nothing appears until you add a 👍 to the comment yourself. Reactions, because they work from the GitHub mobile app.

Limits worth knowing

• The drawn themes are images, so nothing inside them is clickable — just a leave a message link underneath. Use drawn, cozy, steam or minimal if you want every username to be a link to their profile.
• Avatars are copied into the image, because GitHub's image proxy blocks outside requests. If someone changes their picture, yours updates on the next comment.
• Dates are drawn when the board is rendered, which is why they're absolute rather than "2h ago". A picture can't tell the time.
• A README can't scroll, so GitComment doesn't fake it. Newest few, then a link to the rest.

Development

npm install
npm test
npm run build

npm run try -- <owner>/<repo> <discussion> renders every theme against a real Discussion without writing anything, then npm run serve to look at them.

dist/index.js is committed because GitHub Actions runs it directly.

Credits

Handwriting is Caveat, SIL Open Font License.

License

MIT