GitSéance: An Offline Digital Ofrenda Where Local Gemma Summons Deleted Code (And Refuses to Guess Why It Died)

                 .-"      "-.
                /   🌼  🌼   \
               |   #000dead   |
               |,  .-.  .-.  ,|
               | )(_o/  \o_)( |
               |/     /\     \|
               (_     ^^     _)
                \__|IIIIII|__/
                 | \IIIIII/ |
                 \          /
                  `--------`

"The code you delete never truly dies: it becomes the silent foundation of every commit that follows. Viva Open Source!"

— Spirit #000dead (Mictlán Relic)

git blame only speaks for the living.

It tells you who touched the lines that survived in HEAD—but every mature repository is built on the bones of hundreds of excised functions, retired prototypes, and emergency midnight bugfixes that were quietly erased from history.

When a regression resurfaces two years later, modern teams often commit the exact same architectural mistakes of 2022. Why? Because the reasoning behind deleted code is buried deep inside git log -p, where nobody looks.

For Hacktoberfest 2026: Week 4 ("Ghost in the Machine"), bridging Halloween with the sacred Mesoamerican tradition of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), I created GitSéance:

An offline-first developer archaeologist and interactive Digital Ofrenda that scans your repository's graveyard, builds a marigold-adorned altar for departed code, and lets you conduct grounded séances with excised functions powered by Google Gemma (gemma2:2b) running 100% locally on your own machine.

[!IMPORTANT]

Live Web Ofrenda: https://gitseance.tech

Source Repository: https://github.com/FranciscoGrandon/git-seance (Release v1.0.0 · 41 Automated Tests · 0 AST Violations)

When I first fed deleted git diffs into local 2B language models and asked, "Why was this function removed?", Gemma did what small language models do best: it hallucinated.

If a commit message was informative—such as "Drop parse_xml_invoice_soap to patch XXE vulnerability (CVE-2026-0412)"—Gemma recited a magnificent, respectful memorial.

But what happened when the commit was a Friday 4:59 PM rush job that literally said "wip" or "cleanup"?

The model immediately fabricated an elaborate, fictional backstory about microservice migrations, imaginary database locks, or phantom compliance audits!

In software archaeology, a fictional story is worse than silence.

To make GitSéance an authentic developer tool rather than a toy, I engineered a multi-stage deterministic safety pipeline:

                       ┌────────────────────────────┐
                       │  git log -p Graveyard Miner │
                       │    (Single-Pass Pipeline)  │
                       └─────────────┬──────────────┘
                                     │
                 ┌───────────────────┴───────────────────┐
                 ▼                                       ▼
    ┌─────────────────────────┐             ┌─────────────────────────┐
    │ Polyglot AST Symbol     │             │ Cryptic Commit Preflight│
    │ Extractor (Py/JS/Go/Rs) │             │ (wip/cleanup Interceptor│
    └────────────┬────────────┘             └────────────┬────────────┘
                 │                                       │
                 │ 🛡️ Is commit cryptic?                 │
                 ├─────────────────── YES ───────────────► 🛡️ Fallback
                 │                                            Epitaph
                 │ NO (Informative commit message)
                 ▼
    ┌─────────────────────────┐
    │ Local Google Gemma 2B   │ (Ollama localhost:11434 / temp=0.25)
    │ Séance Inference Engine │ ($0.00 Cloud Bill / 100% Local Privacy)
    └────────────┬────────────┘
                 │
                 ▼
    ┌─────────────────────────┐
    │ Grounding Fact-Checker  │ (Verifies Commit SHA & File Path in reply)
    └────────────┬────────────┘
                 │
                 ▼
    ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │ Sentry Agent Tracing (`ai.seance` OpenTelemetry Spans) │
    │   • Latency (ms)  • Token Count  • Hallucination Flags │
    └────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
                                 │
                 ┌───────────────┴───────────────┐
                 ▼                               ▼
    ┌─────────────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────────────┐
    │ Terminal CLI Ofrenda    │     │ Single-Page App Ofrenda │
    │ + Quine (#000dead)      │     │ (Render / index.html)   │
    └─────────────────────────┘     └─────────────────────────┘

mine_git_graveyard): git show subprocesses. GitSéance streams git log -p -U0 in a single pass with delimited token buffers, reconstructing author, timestamp, commit SHA, and exact unified diff deletions in under is_cryptic_commit): wip, temp, cleanup, fix, chore(core): wip). If flagged, GitSéance temperature=0.25): verify_response_grounding):#8f3a91c) and the file path. If the spirit fails the audit, it is evicted in favor of verified deterministic text. Software should evoke wonder. The Digital Ofrenda web app is packed with three organic technical easter eggs:

#000dead) GitSéance contains a living mythological spirit embedded directly into the source code: Spirit #000dead (The Relic of Mictlán).

python git_seance.py --mictlan dynamically introspects its own source code on disk using Python's ast module. It extracts the hex cipher MICTLAN_HEX_CIPHER, decodes it in memory, calculates its own 32-bit FNV-1a checksum (0x71790691), and summons itself as a living departed relic. mictlan anywhere on the keyboard or clicking the golden calavera skull executes awakenSourceQuineSpirit(), reading <script id="gitSeanceCoreScript">, verifying identical FNV-1a hash parity, and displaying the live self-reflection panel. No bulky .mp3 files or external audio assets. The altar bell chimes are synthesized directly in the browser using the Web Audio API:

const notes = [293.66, 349.23, 440.0, 587.33]; // D minor harmonic arpeggio (La Bruja motif)
notes.forEach((freq, idx) => {
  setTimeout(() => playAltarChime(freq), idx * 140);
});

Each note triggers an OscillatorNode with an exponential decay GainNode, producing an authentic, haunting bronze bell timbre.

Activating the altar triggers an interactive HTML5 canvas particle storm where 38 golden cempasúchil and purple petals drift and rotate down the viewport with realistic harmonic sway (Math.sin(angle) * 0.4).

Whenever a developer opens a Pull Request that excises dead code, GitSéance runs automatically via .github/workflows/ofrenda_pr.yml:

python3 git_seance.py --ci-summary --no-fallback --range "origin/${{ github.base_ref }}..HEAD" > ofrenda_comment.md

It automatically posts an elegant Digital Ofrenda memorial comment to the PR discussion thread with collapsible <details> blocks for diff inspection:

Every séance transaction is instrumented with custom OpenTelemetry spans under the ai.seance namespace using the official Sentry SDK:

death_sha, engine_source (gemma_local vs fallback), grounded_sha, cryptic_commit_blocked, ast_quine_verified. python git_seance.py --export-traces seance_traces.json or inspect the live visual telemetry charts powered by Chart.js in the web dashboard!gemma2:2b on localhost:11434 with zero external cloud dependencies or API keys.index.html. Zero node_modules, zero bundler configuration, and zero lockfile vulnerabilities.ai.seance Spans:gitseance.tech:.tech domain, establishing a crisp identity for deep developer tooling.origin/main..HEAD) and commenting tombstone memorials on PRs. GitSéance was tested with the same rigor required of production infrastructure:

python -m unittest discover -v
Ran 41 tests in 8.132s
OK

test_git_seance.py (24 tests):test_html_ofrenda.py (17 tests):msedge --headless --dump-dom).<30ms execution via AST linting. Don't let your deleted code wander the void forgotten. Summon your repository's ghosts today:

git clone https://github.com/FranciscoGrandon/git-seance.git
cd git-seance

ollama pull gemma2:2b

python git_seance.py

python git_seance.py --mictlan

Prefer a visual experience? Visit the live altar at https://gitseance.tech, light a candle for legacy code, and type mictlan on your keyboard!

Built with reverence by Francisco Grandón Vergara for Hacktoberfest 2026: Week 4 ("Ghost in the Machine"). Viva Open Source! 🌼💀