Gitdot
A better GitHub. Open-source, written in Rust
Details
- External ID
- 48447806
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Gitdot
- Website domain
- gitdot.io
- Launched
- June 8, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 334
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9836065573770492
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
What works now: user signups, org creations, private/public repos, and importing GitHub repositories (both as read-only mirrors and full migrations). So basically, you can create, push and pull to a repo, but we don't have many features quite yet (issues, PRs, CI).What is a bit unique is: 1) we built it in Rust and 2) the website is a little odd. Its design is inspired by CLIs (e.g., fzf, broot, vim) instead of web apps, and as such, lacks some affordances that you might typically expect in favor of keyboard-driven instant navigations (we have the very ambitious goal of an FCP of 100ms). In case you're curious, here's how we we built it: https://gitdot.io/designsWe recognize that we're making some bold claims here and are also well aware that we have much to learn. Building software is still hard, and that's a fact we seem to relearn everyday.But we wanted to share what we built so far nonetheless.Cheers, thank y'all for reading, and till the next —paul & mikkel.
Enrichment
- Theme
- git and repository workflow tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- github alternative written in rust
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Building a custom Git hosting platform from scratch in Rust requires implementing core Git wire protocols (Smart HTTP, SSH packfile negotiation), object storage, and distributed repository state management.
What it would actually take: A production implementation requires a Rust backend (e.g., using Axum/Tokio and libgit2 or custom gitoxide bindings) handling Git smart HTTP and SSH protocols with packfile generation and delta resolution. It requires low-level systems programming, intricate knowledge of Git internals and binary formats, and robust transaction/locking semantics across a distributed filesystem or object storage (like S3 with custom metadata indexes).
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Mercurial, Fossil, Perforce/Helix, Mastrojs (frontend alternative)
Concerns raised: Rust is disadvantage for web-app development, Deep transitive dependencies despite Rust reputation, Memory safety not guaranteed with unsafe blocks in dependencies, Rust community toxicity scares away newcomers, Using Rust as marketing gimmick rather than solving real problems
Feature requests: OCI/Docker container images easier to find or provide, Frontend rewrite needed
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 261 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #5 of 262 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 217 days after the earliest competitor.
- Git repositories hosted directly on Freenet · hn · 2026-05-01 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- GitSee · ph · 2026-09-29 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Google Maps but for your repo (Open Source) · hn · 2026-02-08 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Better Hub · hn · 2026-02-26 · 38 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Built a tool that turns your GitHub commits into build-in-public posts · hn · 2026-03-01 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- GitSeer · ph · 2026-09-29 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- I built a tool to manage work and personal Git repos · hn · 2026-03-07 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- GitByBit — Git course integrated into VSCode and Cursor · hn · 2026-01-27 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.47
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.