Sidework: personal software and the people who build it

A developer built Sidework, a prototype at sidework-ten.vercel.app/mager/ that combines a public maker profile with a private workbench for importing public GitHub repositories, editing project descriptions, and planning open source contributions. Sidework separates personal projects such as Homeport, Mood Shell, Perch, and prxps from upstream contributions like a pull request to Impeccable, linking each contribution to its pull request, repository, and recorded status. The profile uses a compact maker row and a project switcher with keyboard navigation and direct links, and keeps projects readable without JavaScript.

← Back to the feed https://mager.co/ Sidework: personal software and the people who build it A prototype for discovering personal projects, tracking open source contributions, and preparing a developer profile through GitHub and MCP. On this page 5 sections I started with a smaller goal: contribute to four more open source projects within a week. I had already made a set of contributions, and I wanted a better way to keep track of them and decide what to work on next. Then I looked at my own projects. Homeport https://mager.co/blog/2026-10-04-homeport/ , Mood Shell https://mager.co/blog/2026-10-02-mood-shell/ , and Perch https://mager.co/blog/2026-10-04-perch/ have source code, live sites, and posts explaining how I built them. Those pieces live in different places. A repository shows the code. A blog post explains a decision. Neither gives someone a quick way to browse the software I make and try something useful. That became Sidework https://sidework-ten.vercel.app/mager/ , a prototype for discovering personal software through the people who build it. The longer-term idea is a social network around projects and contributions. The first version starts with my own profile and the tools I need to fill it. Projects and contributions belong together I want a profile to answer a few practical questions: What does this person build? What does the software do? Can I try it? Where is the source? What have they helped improve elsewhere? Personal projects and upstream contributions can share a profile while keeping their meaning clear. Homeport is a project I built. A pull request to Impeccable is a contribution to someone else's project. Sidework gives the first a project view with a screenshot, description, stack, and links. The second gets a link to the actual pull request, its repository, and its recorded status. That distinction matters more to me than an activity total. A useful fix can be small. A project can be useful before it attracts stars. I want the work itself to be easy to inspect, with @handles identifying the people behind it. From a portfolio page to a software browser The early versions had large headings, unusual fonts, and generous space around project screenshots. I liked parts of the design, but the page still felt too much like a blog. Changing the type did not change the activity: you were still scrolling through a long presentation. The more useful change was structural. The public profile now has a compact maker row and a project switcher. Select Homeport, Mood Shell, Perch, or prxps, and the main panel shows that project's screenshot, purpose, technical details, and links. Selected contributions sit below it. This makes the page something you can use to explore software. You can move between projects, open an app, or go straight to its source without reading a long introduction. The switcher supports keyboard navigation and direct links to each project. Without JavaScript, the projects remain available in the page. I built this with Astra and used Impeccable during the interface work. The repeated revisions helped clarify the product: I wanted people to discover a builder through their software, with enough context to decide what to open next. Two interfaces, with different jobs I kept both the public profile and a private workbench. The profile is for visitors. The workbench is where I can import repositories, edit project descriptions, and plan contributions. The GitHub importer works with public repositories. It loads the repository list across pages, lets me search and filter it, and supports selecting several repositories at once. Reimporting should preserve the descriptions and project order I have already edited. GitHub supplies useful facts, but a repository description rarely tells the whole story. The editor also has space for why I built something and what I learned. Those fields need my input; they should not become confident guesses based on a README. My public profile https://sidework-ten.vercel.app/mager/ does not require an invite. The rest of the prototype is invite-only while I work through the setup and editing flow. Setting up a profile through MCP I also wanted an agent interface from the start. If I am already working with a coding agent, I should be able to ask it to help prepare my Sidework profile. The prototype includes a Model Context Protocol MCP endpoint at /api/mcp and a Claude Code plugin. Tools such as get profile , list github repositories , and prepare profile draft let an agent inspect the existing profile, find public repositories, and prepare a draft with up to six projects. The intended request is simple: “Set up my Sidework profile from my public GitHub repositories.” The agent can gather facts and prepare descriptions, then return a review link. I inspect the result in the browser before saving it. The agent setup guide https://github.com/mager/sidework/blob/main/docs/agents.md covers the connection and plugin installation. The agent cannot publish to the public profile. Saving an accepted draft currently saves it in that browser. This gives me a way to test assisted setup before connecting it to account ownership and publication. What the prototype can do today Sidework runs on Astro and Vercel. The public profile is a committed snapshot, and changes to that snapshot require a source update and a rebuild. Imports, saved projects, follows, and editing drafts are stored in the browser. There is no shared social graph or cross-device account system yet, and the importer does not access private repositories. The next useful step is to make one person's complete path work: connect GitHub, choose a few projects, review their descriptions, and publish a profile they can return to and update. After that, I want to test whether browsing other people's projects actually helps someone find useful software or a contribution they want to make. You can browse my profile https://sidework-ten.vercel.app/mager/ or read the source on GitHub https://github.com/mager/sidework . Reach out to @mager on X https://x.com/mager if you want an invite code to try Sidework.