Skip to content

The TUI

The fastest way to work through your repositories is the interactive table. Start it any of these ways:

gman          # bare command, no subcommand
gman --tui
gman tui
gman-tui

Reading the screen

  • Header — the app title, and a subtitle showing your username, visible/total repo counts, the active filter, and how many repos you've selected.

  • The table — one row per repo, eight columns:

    Column Meaning
    ✓ Selected for a bulk action
    Name Repository name
    Vis. Badges: 🔒 private / 🌐 public, ⑂ fork, ❌ archived, 📌 pinned to your profile
    Description First 80 characters
    Lang Primary language
    Stars Star count
    Open Open issues + pull requests
    Updated Last update date

  • Footer — the keybindings available right now.

Keys

Looking around

Key Action
↑ ↓ Move through the table
/ Filter by substring (matches name and description; submit empty to clear)
Enter or i Open the detail panel for the current repo
v (in the detail panel) Read the repo's rendered README
o Open the current repo in your browser
r Refresh everything from GitHub

The filter is instant and local — it narrows the table without touching the network.

Acting on one repo

Key Action
c Change the description
t Edit topics (comma-separated; validated before saving)
h Edit the homepage URL
a Archive — or unarchive, if it's already archived
s Sync a fork with its upstream
d Delete (with warnings, confirmation, and optional backup)

Acting on many repos

Key Action
space Select / deselect the current repo
ctrl+a Select everything visible (press again to deselect)
b Open the bulk-action menu for the selection

Housekeeping

Key Action
e Export the current list to github_repos.xlsx (in the directory you launched the TUI from)
x Open that spreadsheet in your default app
q Quit

The detail panel

Press Enter (or i) on any repo to open its dossier: description and topics, stars/forks/size/license, creation and update dates, a language breakdown, the latest release, the last CI run, the GitHub Pages URL, 14-day traffic, the open issue/PR split, security posture (Dependabot and secret-scanning alert counts, vulnerability-alerts status), and Actions storage (artifacts and cache size).

For forks there's an extra line — ⑂ fork of owner/repo — N ahead / M behind — so you can tell at a glance whether s (sync) is worth pressing.

Two things worth knowing:

  • Each row loads independently. If your token can't see something (say, traffic), that row shows — with a hint naming the permission — the rest of the panel still fills in. See Tokens & permissions.
  • Results are cached for the session, so reopening a panel is instant. Press r to refresh from GitHub.

From the panel, v opens the repo's README rendered right in the terminal — useful for answering "what is this repo?" before deleting it. Esc backs out of any screen.

Deleting, safely

Press d on a repo and gman opens a red confirmation modal that:

  1. Warns you if the repo has forks or stars, is public, or is pinned to your profile — the situations where deleting is most likely to be a mistake.
  2. Offers a "Backup tarball first" checkbox. When ticked, gman downloads {name}-{branch}.tar.gz to the current directory before deleting — and if that download fails, the deletion is aborted.
  3. Requires you to retype the repo's full name. No match, no deletion.

Esc cancels at any point.

Bulk actions

The multi-select workflow turns an afternoon of clicking into a minute of key presses:

  1. Select repos with space (or grab everything visible with ctrl+a — filter first with / to narrow the set). The ✓ column and the subtitle track your selection.
  2. Press b. The menu offers:
    • Archive / Unarchive
    • Delete branch on merge → ON / OFF
    • Wiki, Issues, Projects → ON / OFF
    • Add topic… / Remove topic… (you'll be prompted for the topic)
    • Vulnerability alerts → ON / OFF
    • Automated security fixes → ON / OFF
    • Sync fork with upstream (skips non-forks)
    • Clear Actions artifacts / Clear Actions caches
  3. A confirmation screen shows the operation and the target list — press y to proceed, n or Esc to back out.
  4. Operations run one repo at a time; the subtitle shows progress, and a notification summarizes the outcome (12 ok, 0 failed). The table refreshes and your selection clears when it finishes.

If GitHub rate-limits mid-run, the remaining repos are skipped and reported — nothing is left half-applied.