htop for Your Git History
go
dev.to
You clone a repo you've never seen before and you want to understand it. Not the code, not yet. The shape of the project. Who's been working on it? How often? Is it one person pushing daily or three people who show up once a month? Are there stale branches? When was the last release? What files change the most? Git has answers to all of this, scattered across a dozen commands. git log --format with the right incantation gives you commit frequency. git shortlog -sn gives you contributor rankings