git2gpt

This repository is an experiment at bootstrapping prompt-driven self-modifying software with GPT-4.

Basic features:

• Provides snapshot of a git repo to the GPT-4 API.
• Prompt GPT-4 to generate modifications to the repo.
• Review and apply changes generated by the GPT-4 API.

Note that while this was initially an experiment in self-modifying code, git2gpt will generate prompt-driven changes for any repo you lying around, which you can specify with the --repo flag, though be aware of the context size limits you have available.

Usage:

1. Run pip install git2gpt
2. Set up your OPENAI_API_KEY. Either write it to your ~/.env like this: echo 'OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-<key>" >> ~/.env or set it in your environment export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk_key
3. Change into a repo and make your first change cd somerepo ; git2gpt --prompt "add Hello World to the README"

Contributing

0. Optionally: create and activate a virtualenv python3 -m venv env . env/bin/activate
1. Install the required packages using pip: pip install -r requirements.txt
2. Set up your OpenAI API key: echo "OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key_here" > .env
3. Run the main script: python main.py --prompt <prompt to modify the code>
4. Or, install the package in editable mode pip install -e . and use the git2gpt command.

Instead of specifying the prompt on the commandline, you can also call git2gpt --editor to open your default $EDITOR to use while crafting the prompt.

Building and Uploading Package

After making any changes to the code, you can build the package and upload it to PyPI by running the provided script:

chmod +x build_and_upload.sh
./build_and_upload.sh

Make sure you have the twine package installed and configured with your PyPI credentials.

Building

Building git2gpt using ChatGPT Plus was very straightforward:

1. I pasted in some relevant documentation (like the OpenAI Chat Completions API) and chatted a bit about what I wanted to build.
2. I then prompted it to write code that translates a git archive tar to a json format. This code now lives in git2gpt/git_to_json.py
3. Using this code, I iterated using the ChatGPT Plus UI by pasting a full json snapshot of the current state of the repository, and prompting it to generate various changes, then applying those changes.

As part of the experiment I tried to avoid all manual changes, though ultimately did some tuning of the prompt-generating code at the very end.

Results

Building this in conjunction with GPT-4 was easy, but a little tedious. This library should help reduce the tedium of this kind of workflow in the future. It's not ready to replace programmers quite yet; one definitely still needs to have an idea what to prompt it to build, and to be able to evaluate the result for fitness to purppose.

I encourage experimenting with writing software using this kind of workflow, I think a lot of software development might start looking like this in the future.

Limitations:

• Obviously, you should review all changes before running any code from third parties, including from GPT-4.
• I would say the generation quality seemed to get worse as my repo grew larger. I plan to experiment and tune the process once I get access to the GPT-4 API.