Forkwatch

Discover meaningful patches hiding in GitHub forks.

Forkwatch analyzes forks of a repository to find changes that haven't been submitted as pull requests. It groups forks by the files they modify and highlights convergence — when multiple independent forks touch the same code, that's a strong signal something needs fixing upstream.

Inspired by the idea of Respectful Open Source: maintainers and users should be able to find meaningful work happening in forks without anyone having to push a PR.

Install

Homebrew

brew install stympy/tap/forkwatch

Go

go install github.com/stympy/forkwatch@latest

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/stympy/forkwatch.git
cd forkwatch
go build -o forkwatch .

Prerequisites

Forkwatch uses the GitHub CLI for authentication. Install it and run gh auth login before using forkwatch.

Usage

forkwatch analyze owner/repo [flags]

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--min-ahead	1	Minimum commits ahead to consider
--limit	100	Max forks to analyze (sorted by most recently pushed)
--json	false	Output as JSON (includes recommended_changes)
--patch	false	Output a unified diff suitable for git apply

Examples

# Analyze forks of a repository
forkwatch analyze expressjs/express

# Only show forks with 3+ commits ahead
forkwatch analyze expressjs/express --min-ahead 3

# Get JSON output for scripting
forkwatch analyze expressjs/express --json

# Get a unified diff you can apply directly
forkwatch analyze expressjs/express --patch | git apply

# Analyze more forks (slower, uses more API calls)
forkwatch analyze expressjs/express --limit 500

Example output

$ forkwatch analyze maximadeka/convertkit-ruby

maximadeka/convertkit-ruby
Forks: 46 total, 17 analyzed, 17 with meaningful changes

convertkit-ruby.gemspec (11 forks converge here)

  WebinarGeek +1 -2 — Change gitspec faraday version
    -  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", "~> 1.0"
    -  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday_middleware", "~> 1.0"
    +  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", '>= 2.0'

  alexbndk +1 -2 — Update convertkit-ruby.gemspec
    -  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", "~> 1.0"
    -  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday_middleware", "~> 1.0"
    +  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", "~> 2.7.4"

  excid3 +1 -2 — Update faraday_middleware dependency to the latest
    -  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", "~> 1.0"
    -  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday_middleware", "~> 1.0"
    +  spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", ">= 1.0", "< 3.0"
  ...

lib/convertkit/connection.rb (4 forks converge here)

  Most common change pattern:
     require "faraday"
    -require "faraday_middleware"
     require "json"
  WebinarGeek, chaiandconversation, alexbndk, excid3
...

11 independent forks all updating the gemspec to fix the faraday dependency — and now you can see exactly what each one changed. When forks make identical changes (like removing the faraday_middleware require), they're grouped together automatically.

Applying changes

The --patch flag outputs a unified diff of the most-converged-upon change for each file, ready to pipe into git apply:

forkwatch analyze maximadeka/convertkit-ruby --patch | git apply

For each file where multiple forks converge, forkwatch picks the patch shared by the most forks and emits it with proper --- a/ / +++ b/ headers.

JSON output

The --json flag outputs structured data for scripting and automation. It includes a top-level recommended_changes array — the winning patch per convergent file, ready to act on:

{
  "recommended_changes": [
    {
      "file": "convertkit-ruby.gemspec",
      "patch": "--- a/convertkit-ruby.gemspec\n+++ b/convertkit-ruby.gemspec\n@@ ...",
      "convergence": 11,
      "agreed_by": 8,
      "forks": ["WebinarGeek", "alexbndk", "..."],
      "commit_message": "Upgrade faraday to v2"
    }
  ],
  "clusters": [ "..." ]
}

Each recommendation includes:

• file — path that needs changing
• patch — git apply-ready unified diff for this file
• convergence — total forks touching this file
• agreed_by — how many forks share this exact patch
• forks — which fork owners agree on this change
• commit_message — representative first-line commit message from the agreeing forks

How it works

1. Fetches forks sorted by most recently pushed
2. Compares each fork's default branch to upstream
3. Filters out noise: bot commits (dependabot, renovate), lock file changes, CI config tweaks
4. Groups forks by the files they modify
5. Highlights convergence — files modified by multiple independent forks
6. Shows the actual patches — when multiple forks make identical changes, they're grouped together; unique changes are shown inline with their diffs

Rate limits

Forkwatch uses one GitHub API call per fork analyzed plus a few for setup. It monitors rate limits and stops gracefully before hitting 403s. With the default --limit 100, a typical run uses ~100 API calls out of GitHub's 5,000/hour allowance.