Welcome to GitSpeak

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How to get started with GitSpeak

This document explains some of the ways you can use GitSpeak to improve communication around your codebase. If you have questions or feedback, don't hesitate to create an issue or join our Slack channel.

Quickly navigate around your project

GitSpeak is built with productivity in mind. With the tabs on the left-hand side you're always one click away from all parts of your project, like Issues, Pull Requests, Milestones, and more.

Once you've opened a tab, you'll see a list of the given issues/PRs etc so that you can quickly jump between them. You can also filter through them to find the one you're looking for.

Write comments like a pro

The commenting feature is at the core of GitSpeak. It's both powerful and simple to use. It's built on top of markdown, but it formats the text on the fly so that the text doesn't get cluttered with ugly markdown.

As you'll see in the following paragraphs, you can embed code and GitSpeak codecasts in comments as well.

Open code snippets in the IDE

When you paste a code snippet from your IDE and into a GitSpeak comment, the snippet will automatically remember the surrounding context.

So when other people click your snippet GitSpeak opens up the codebase with the snippet highlighted. This makes it a lot easier for others to reason about the code.

Do audiovisual code reviews

Doing code reviews via text can be tricky. Codecasts offer a way to quickly record audiovisual feedback. Click the "Start review" button on a pull request, which opens up the editor with the code changes highlighted. Then hit "Record", and give your feedback.

Once you're done, this review will be attached to the pull request as a comment.

Keep recordings of onboarding sessions

Doing code walk-throughs with new hires is important to get them to understand the codebase. However, it's not easy to grasp it all on the first try, so by recording the sessions, you'll give them a chance to rewatch parts which were hard to understand the first time.

Another benefit with this is that new hires in the future can watch these sessions as well, and thus save time by not having to do the same walkthroughs again and again.

Live-stream your code

Want to have a live discussion about your code with a colleague/mentor/teacher? Just open the Codecasts tab and hit "New". Then you can invite the other person, and start talking via voice chat.

The experience is much better than traditional video streaming as it's super lightweight, and both of you can edit the code. As you probably understand by now, can of course also record these sessions.