rip: A local graveyard and ofrenda for forgotten side projects

A developer built rip, a local CLI tool that scans workspaces for dormant projects and uses a local Google Gemma 2 (2B) model via Ollama to write witty epitaphs for abandoned code. The tool passes only high-level metadata — project name, days inactive, size, and last Git commit message — to the air-gapped model, never reading source code or file contents, and renders results as ANSI terminal tombstones plus a self-contained HTML cemetery gallery. A --ofrenda flag turns each eulogy into actionable revival suggestions, and the developer reports Gemma 2's 2B instruction-following returned clean, parseable JSON at temperature 0.7.

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week4-2026-10-26 Every developer has a drive full of abandoned side quests: half-finished prototypes, 2 AM scripts, and repos whose last commit was simply "fixing bugs please work" . Usually, they just sit there until an aggressive disk cleanup wipes them out. For Halloween and Día de los Muertos, I built rip : a local CLI tool that acts as a digital cemetery for dead code. It scans your workspaces for dormant projects, reads strictly high-level metadata last modified date, size, and last Git commit , and pipes it into a local Google Gemma 2 2B instance. Gemma acts as the gravekeeper, writing witty epitaphs for why each project died. With the --ofrenda flag, it channels Día de los Muertos by turning the eulogy into an altar, offering actionable sparks to resurrect the project today. The generated dark-mode visual cemetery view cemetery.html : In the terminal, it renders ASCII tombstones before generating the web gallery: .---. / RIP / | | rust-game-engine-attempt | | | | "It chased a dream of a world built in rust, but the compiler's silence remains." | | | | 🌼 Ofrenda Revival: Seek the engine's heart. A compiler update might be the spark to bring it back. A local CLI tool and digital cemetery built for Hacktoberfest 2026: Ghost in the Machine . Channels the spirits of forgotten scripts and abandoned repositories using local Google Gemma 2 2B Every developer's drive hosts a quiet graveyard: incomplete prototypes, late-night experiments, and uncommitted scripts. rip acts as a respectful gravekeeper. It traverses your workspaces to locate dormant projects, passing strictly metadata modification age, sizes, and Git commit logs to an air-gapped Gemma 2 instance. It produces witty obituaries and constructive Ofrenda sparks to resurrect your code, rendered both as ANSI terminal tombstones and a self-contained HTML gallery. rip runs an open-weight foundation model locally; source code and file contents never touch the inference pipeline. The stack is intentionally minimal and runs 100% locally: gemma2:2b via Ollama. Gemma 2's instruction-following at 2B parameters made it fast and consistent at returning clean, parseable JSON without hallucinated markdown fences. rich for terminal panels. pathlib and subprocess to grab git log -1 . rip never reads actual code or file contents. It sends only the project name, days inactive, and the last commit message to Gemma at temperature: 0.7 . Running rip against my own old folders and seeing Gemma roast a commit from months ago wasn't just fun, it was oddly motivating. Instead of feeling guilty about abandoned repos, it treats them as part of the creative process and gives a clear prompt to pick one back up.