PR Buddy — A lightweight system tray companion that monitors your GitHub PRs

PR Buddy is a fast, native desktop companion for engineers who want immediate insight into pull request health without living in a browser tab.

It runs in your system tray, watches your assigned and authored PRs, and keeps you updated with focused notifications when state changes matter.

Features

• 🔔 Native OS notifications for: checks failed, merge queue removal, PR merged, checks passed
• 📋 Compact tray panel with grouped PR sections (merge queue, failing checks, needs review, approved, draft, merged)
• 🔐 GitHub OAuth Device Flow — no server needed
• 🖥️ Cross-platform: macOS status bar + Windows taskbar
• ⚡ Tiny binary (~5MB) — built with Tauri v2 + Rust
• 🔄 Adaptive polling (30s when checks pending, 2min when stable)

Screenshot

Tech Stack

Technology	Role in PR Buddy
Tauri v2	Native shell, system tray integration, packaging
Svelte 5	Reactive tray panel UI
TypeScript	Frontend application logic and types
Tailwind CSS	Utility-first styling for compact UI
Rust	Native backend, polling, notifications, OAuth flow
GitHub GraphQL API	Pull request and review/check metadata

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• Rust 1.77+
• Tauri CLI

Install Tauri CLI (if needed):

cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2.0"

Installation

git clone <your-fork-or-repo-url>
cd pr-buddy
npm install

Run in Development Mode

npm install && npm run dev

Build for Production

npm run build

GitHub OAuth Setup

1. Create a GitHub OAuth App in your GitHub account settings.
2. Copy the generated Client ID.
3. Set GITHUB_CLIENT_ID in your environment before launching the app.

export GITHUB_CLIENT_ID="your_client_id_here"

PowerShell:

$env:GITHUB_CLIENT_ID = "your_client_id_here"

Architecture

PR Buddy follows a lightweight desktop architecture:

1. Tray icon provides always-on access from the OS menu bar/taskbar.
2. Svelte panel renders grouped PR states and user actions.
3. Rust backend handles polling, OAuth device flow, notifications, and state transitions.
4. GitHub API is queried via GraphQL for PR status, checks, merge queue state, and review metadata.

Data flows from GitHub into the Rust core, then into the Svelte UI via Tauri commands/events for a responsive tray experience.

Project Structure

pr-buddy/
├── src/                # Svelte 5 frontend source
│   ├── lib/            # Shared UI/state utilities
│   └── routes/         # App routes/views
├── src-tauri/
│   ├── src/            # Rust backend source
│   ├── icons/          # App and tray icons
│   └── tauri.conf.json # Tauri configuration
├── package.json        # Node scripts and frontend dependencies
└── README.md

License

Licensed under the ISC License. See LICENSE for details.