The Developer Herald, news from the projects you build on

What it is#

The Developer Herald brings you the news from upstream: new releases of the projects you build on, changes to the GitHub issues you're waiting on, and new models from the Hugging Face authors you follow. A local model writes a short summary of each new release, so you can see at a glance what changed.

It's the developer twin of the Herald. Once it's hired, it holds the Herald's office, and the Herald stays at work behind it with its own plain news (games, drivers, the weather, this PC's updates). Each shows its own news on its own page.

What it watches#

Nothing until you choose. You follow any of:

• Release feeds: a GitHub repository's releases.
• Tracked issues: a GitHub issue, for its state, its comments and any fix that appears.
• Hugging Face: an author, and searches among their models.

It suggests what to follow, from your own projects: Reeve finds the projects on this PC, and the Developer Herald offers the GitHub repositories of the packages they depend on, most used first, each with Follow. See Choose what the Developer Herald follows.

How it works#

A round every 6 hours, or on Run now. Each round reads every feed once.

Code decides what's news. A release not seen before, an issue that changed state, gained comments or got a fix, a model new to a search: each is news. The first time a feed is read, what's there already is the baseline, never news.

Code decides what's relevant. A release whose notes mention one of your keywords, or one of your tracked issues, is flagged relevant, with the matching lines quoted word for word.

The model only summarises. A small model on this PC writes two or three sentences on each new release's notes, labelled with where it was written ("note from the NPU, unverified"). It never decides what's news. See How the Developer Herald decides what's news.

Its home page#

The Developer Herald's page is at http://developer-herald.localhost:19898/, and Open on the herald's card in Castellan goes there. From the top:

• What it needs, while you follow nothing yet.
• GitHub: whether it reads GitHub through your signed-in GitHub CLI, or GitHub's public API, and what to do for more.
• Suggested feeds: repositories your projects depend on, with Follow, Not this one and Look again.
• News: unread items, relevant first, each with what code found, the quoted lines, the model's summary and a link upstream. Mark read on each, and Mark all read. Quiet releases and items read lately are folded away below.
• From the Herald: the Herald's failed sources and the app updates winget offers, with the details its plain page leaves out (below).
• Feeds: each feed's latest release with its summary, or an issue's state, comments, labels and linked fixes, with when it was last checked and any error.
• Settings and Run now, in the title bar.

From the Herald#

The Herald's own page is the same plain page for everyone. What a developer would want of it is here:

• Its sources that failed, each with its error as it came, and when it last worked.
• Updates winget offers, each with its package id, its release notes when the Herald found them, and the command that installs it (winget upgrade --id <id> --exact). Neither herald installs anything.

It only reads the Herald's state; the Herald is never asked, and nothing of it is changed.

What it never does#

• It never writes upstream. Every call to GitHub is a read: it can't comment, star or change anything.
• It never installs anything.
• It never decides on the model's word. What's news and what's relevant are code's decisions; the summary is labelled unverified.

Getting started#

1. Hire it in Castellan, from the herald's card. It's included in the Workshop license, and hiring it is what turns Castellan's developer features on. See Hiring, switching and letting staff go.
2. Take its tour: it asks for something to follow.
3. Follow a few of the suggested feeds, and add the issues you're waiting on.
4. Add keywords for what matters to you, so the right releases are flagged relevant.