Supported platforms: GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo

Compare commitdog’s support for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, and Forgejo — token requirements, self-hosted setup, and which features each platform supports.

commitdog works with four Git hosting platforms: GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, and Forgejo. Each platform requires a personal access token with specific scopes, and three of the four support self-hosted instances. You configure each platform once with commitdog setup and commitdog handles the rest — creating repos, pushing commits, opening pull requests, and publishing releases — all through the platform’s API without opening a browser.

Feature support by platform

Feature	GitHub	GitLab	Gitea	Forgejo
Commit and push	✓	✓	✓	✓
Create repo (init)	✓	✓	✓	✓
Branch management	✓	✓	✓	✓
Sync with auto-recovery	✓	✓	✓	✓
Pull requests (pr)	✓	—	—	—
Releases with assets	✓	✓	✓	✓
Self-hosted instance	—	✓	✓	✓

Platform details

GitHub

Token type: Classic personal access token (PAT)

Create a token at: github.com/settings/tokens

Required scopes:

• repo — full repository access (read/write)
• write:org — create and manage organization repositories
• read:user — read your account username

GitHub tokens must begin with ghp_ (classic PAT) or github_pat_ (fine-grained PAT). commitdog validates the prefix during commitdog setup and rejects tokens that do not match.

Self-hosted: GitHub Enterprise is not currently supported. commitdog connects to api.github.com directly.

Releases: commitdog creates a GitHub Release, uploads all build artifacts as release assets, and generates a checksums.txt file.

Pull requests: Supported. On a feature branch, commitdog pr opens an interactive diff viewer and creates a PR. On main, it lists open PRs for you to review, merge (merge, squash, or rebase), or close.

GitLab

Token type: Legacy personal access token

Create a token at: gitlab.com/-/profile/personal_access_tokens

Required scopes:

• api — full API access (required for all operations)

GitLab tokens must begin with glpat-. commitdog validates the prefix during commitdog setup.

Self-hosted: Yes. When you configure GitLab, commitdog asks for your instance URL. Press Enter to use https://gitlab.com, or paste your self-hosted URL (for example, https://gitlab.example.com). The host is saved to your config and used for all API calls.

Releases: commitdog uploads build artifacts to GitLab’s Generic Packages registry, then creates a Release with links to those package assets.

Merge requests: Not currently supported. Use your GitLab web interface to open and merge merge requests.

Gitea

Token type: Personal access token

Create a token at: Your Gitea instance → Settings → Applications

Required scopes:

• repository — read and write access to repositories
• organization — read and write access to organizations
• user — read and write access to your user profile

Gitea does not use a token prefix, so commitdog accepts any non-empty string.

Self-hosted: Yes. Gitea is always self-hosted. When you configure Gitea, commitdog prompts you for your instance URL (for example, https://git.yourcompany.com).

Releases: commitdog uploads assets in batches of four to stay within Gitea’s API limits, pausing between batches to avoid rate limiting.

Pull requests: Not currently supported. Use your Gitea web interface to open and merge pull requests.

Forgejo

Token type: Personal access token

Create a token at: Your Forgejo instance → Settings → Applications

Required scopes:

• repository — read and write access to repositories
• organization — read and write access to organizations
• user — read and write access to your user profile

Forgejo’s API is compatible with Gitea. commitdog uses the same token format and the same batched upload strategy for releases.

Self-hosted: Yes. When you configure Forgejo, commitdog prompts you for your instance URL.

Releases: commitdog uploads assets in batches of four, with a pause between batches.

Pull requests: Not currently supported. Use your Forgejo web interface to open and merge pull requests.

Configuring a platform

Run commitdog setup and select the platform you want to configure. You can run commitdog setup multiple times to add or update tokens for different platforms — existing tokens for other platforms are not affected.

commitdog setup

  which platform token do you want to configure?

  1  github
  2  gitlab
  3  gitea
  4  forgejo
  5  remove a platform

  [1/2/3/4/5] pick › 

commitdog saves each token to ~/.config/commitdog/config.toml with 0600 permissions. Your tokens never leave your machine except when commitdog makes an API call to the platform you configured. Option 5 disconnects a platform: it deletes the saved token and removes the platform’s remote and .commitdog entry from the current repo. See Remove a platform.

Using multiple platforms at once

A single repo can live on several platforms at the same time. One platform is the primary and the rest are mirrors, each with its own git remote. Add mirrors with commitdog init, push to a specific platform with the shortcut flags (commitdog -gh, -gl, -gt, -fg), and publish a release everywhere with commitdog release --all. See Mirrors for the full workflow.