cd /news/developer-tools/i-built-a-graveyard-for-my-dead-side… Β· home β€Ί topics β€Ί developer-tools β€Ί article
[ARTICLE Β· art-56173] src=dev.to β†— pub= topic=developer-tools verified=true sentiment=↑ positive

I Built a Graveyard for My Dead Side Projects - With AI Eulogies & a 3D Cemetery

A developer built DevGraveyard, a gothic memorial platform where developers can bury their abandoned side projects with AI-generated eulogies. The platform uses Google Gemini to write dramatic breakup letters based on GitHub commit data, and features a 3D cemetery built with Three.js and React Three Fiber. The project is live at devgraveyard.varshithvhegde.in.

read5 min views1 publishedJul 12, 2026

This is a submission for Weekend Challenge: Passion Edition

Every developer has a graveyard of side projects β€” started with fire, abandoned quietly on a Tuesday. They deserved better than an empty GitHub repo gathering digital dust.

DevGraveyard is a gothic memorial platform where developers give their abandoned passion projects a proper burial. Connect your GitHub, pick a dead repo, carve its epitaph β€” and watch Gemini AI write a dramatic breakup letter from you to the project.

Here's what it does:

My own ARweave

repo had 56 commits, a 2-day peak streak, 30 commits on its best day. Cause of death: "Never Made it Past Localhost." Last words: "feat: overlay plane in 3D builder β€” drag/scale image on marker, position saved to DB and restored in AR viewer."

It worked until it worked.

πŸ”— Live β†’ devgraveyard.varshithvhegde.in

A memorial for your abandoned side projects. They deserved better than an empty GitHub repo gathering digital dust.

Live β†’ devgraveyard.varshithvhegde.in

Every developer has a graveyard of passion projects β€” started with fire, abandoned quietly on a Tuesday. DevGraveyard gives them a proper burial.

/graveyard-3d

. Click tombstones…| Layer | Tech | |---|---| | Frontend | Next.js 14 (App Router), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui | | Auth + Database | Supabase (GitHub OAuth, Postgres, Row Level Security) | | AI | Google Gemini gemini-2.5-flash | | 3D | Three.js + React Three Fiber + @react-three/drei | | Animations | Motion (Framer Motion successor) | | Deployment | Vercel |

When you click "Bury a Project", a 3-step wizard walks you through:

This is the technical heart of the project. When you bury a repo, we paginate through the entire commit history via the GitHub API and compute what I call "obsession data":

// From src/lib/github/analyze.ts
export function computePeakObsession(commits: GitHubCommit[]) {
  // commits per day β†’ longest consecutive streak
  // latest commit between midnight–5am β†’ "latest night session"
  // max commits in a single day β†’ "best day"
  // ...
}

These numbers feed directly into the tombstone β€” and into the Gemini prompt. A project that died after 30 commits on its best day tells a different story than one with 3 total commits.

The eulogy prompt is carefully engineered to produce something specific, not generic:

Write exactly 3 paragraphs. Format as a letter FROM the developer
TO the project. Tone: dramatic, darkly funny, genuinely melancholic.
Opening: "Dear {repo_name},"
Reference at least 2 of these real data points:
  - Peak obsession: 30 commits in a single day
  - Latest night session: 2:34 AM  
  - Cause of death: "Never Made it Past Localhost"
  - Last commit message: "feat: overlay plane in 3D builder..."
Close with: "Yours, but not anymore, β€” A Tired Developer"
Max 250 words. No markdown.

The results are genuinely surprising. Gemini knows you committed at 2 AM. It writes about that specific obsession. Here's what it produced for my ARweave

project:

"I remember the fervor, the peak obsession when I clocked 30 commits in a single day, mapping out every PLpgSQL schema and every front-end interaction. We built features that felt so robust within the confines of our little local development environment. You were a vibrant, if demanding, companion, demanding all my CPU cycles and mental bandwidth..."

The eulogy reveals with a typewriter animation when first generated, then persists in Supabase forever.

The 3D view at /graveyard-3d

is a full Three.js scene built with React Three Fiber.

The tombstone shape is a single ExtrudeGeometry

from a THREE.Shape

β€” a rectangle with absarc

for the semicircular arch. Much cleaner than a box + half-cylinder:

function makeTombShape() {
  const w = 0.34, h = 0.95;
  const shape = new THREE.Shape();
  shape.moveTo(-w, 0);
  shape.lineTo(-w, h);
  shape.absarc(0, h, w, Math.PI, 0, false); // perfect semicircle
  shape.lineTo(w, 0);
  return shape;
}

Animations in the scene:

FlickerCandle

β€” cone flame with per-frame scale noise + matching PointLight

intensity flickerSoulWisps

β€” glowing orbs float upward from tombstones with candles litResurrectPulse

β€” an expanding ringGeometry

on the ground below voted tombstonesYou can light candles and vote to resurrect directly from the 3D panel β€” it calls the real API and the stone reacts in real time.

Every buried project joins the public memorial wall at /graveyard

, sortable by newest, most mourned, or most resurrection votes.

The entire aesthetic is built around one idea: this should feel like a real memorial, not a joke. Developers genuinely grieve abandoned projects. The tombstones use engraved text, chiseled dividers, moss at the base. The AI eulogy takes commit data seriously. The community features are real interactions β€” your candle is stored in a database, your RIP message has an author and a timestamp.

The passion isn't just the theme. It's the subject matter.

πŸ† Best Use of Google AI

DevGraveyard uses Google Gemini (gemini-2.5-flash

) as the emotional core of the product. The eulogy generation prompt is engineered to reference specific real data points from the user's commit history β€” producing output that feels genuinely personal rather than generic AI text.

The key insight: the AI isn't just generating content, it's transforming raw GitHub telemetry (commit counts, timestamps, last message) into something that makes you feel the loss of a project you actually cared about.

The eulogy is generated once per tombstone (owner only), stored permanently in Supabase, and revealed with a typewriter animation. It costs one API call and lasts forever β€” the project's eulogy becomes part of its memorial.

Built in a weekend. My ARweave repo will never see production. But now it has a tombstone. That's something.

── more in #developer-tools 4 stories Β· sorted by recency
── more on @devgraveyard 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain β€” perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
β†’ Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host βœ“
Get free account β†’ Pricing
from €0/mo Β· no card required
LIVE [news/i-built-a-graveyard-…] indexed:0 read:5min 2026-07-12 Β· β€”