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Project overview

For: Everyone
Requires: Nothing

What is a GitPulse?

GitPulse is a web application that automatically analyzes student activity on GitLab projects and provides teachers with objective metrics for evaluating teamwork and DevOps practices.

Target group

Primary users

Role	Using
Teacher/Trainer	Activity monitoring, evaluation, problem identification
Course Admin	Course configuration, user management
Operator	Deployment, maintenance, monitoring of the system

Secondary users

Students - indirect access through transparent metrics
Administrators - administration of the entire instance

Key features

1. Data collection from GitLab

sequenceDiagram
    participant G as GitLab
    participant W as Webhook Handler
    participant Q as Redis Queue
    participant P as Event Processor
    participant D as Database

    G->>W: Push/MR/Issue Event
    W->>W: Validate signature
    W->>Q: Enqueue event
    Q->>P: Process event
    P->>D: Store metrics

GitPulse receives webhooks from GitLab and processes:

Push events - commits, file changes
Merge request events - creation, review, merge
Note events - comments, code review
Pipeline events - CI/CD builds
Issue events - task management

2. Compliance assessment

The system evaluates 13 DevOps practices (R01-R13):

Code	Check	Category	Weight
R01	Issue Assigned	Issue	8 %
R02	Branch + MR Created	MR	6 %
R03	Tests Written	MR	10 %
R04	MR Linked to Issue	MR	8 %
R05	MR Description	MR	5 %
R06	Code Review Received	Review	12 %
R07	Code Review Given	Review	12 %
R08	Review Response	Review	10 %
R09	MR Approved	Review	9 %
R10	Merged by Author	MR	7 %
R11	MR + Issue Closed	MR	6 %
R12	Pipeline Green	CI	7 %
R13	Commit Quality	Commit	0 % (opt-in)

3. Dashboard and analysis

Real-time dashboard - current status of all teams with SSE live updates
Team drill-down - detailed analysis of a specific team
Student detail - individual contributions with per-check breakdown
Export - CSV data export, JSON course configuration export/import
LLM analysis - optional AI analysis of merge requests with personal data redaction, disabled in production
Email notifications - automated course and assessment notifications

Technology stack

flowchart TB
    subgraph "Frontend"
        D["Dashboard - Jinja2/HTML"]
    end
    
    subgraph "Backend"
        A["FastAPI"] --> B["SQLAlchemy"]
        A --> C["Redis"]
        W["RQ Workers"]
    end
    
    subgraph "Data"
        B --> P[("PostgreSQL")]
        C --> R[("Redis")]
    end
    
    subgraph "External"
        G["GitLab API"]
    end
    
    A --> G
    W --> G

Component	Technology	Purpose
API Server	FastAPI	REST API, webhook handling
Database	PostgreSQL	Persistent data
Cache/Queue	Redis	Caching, job queue
Workers	RQ (Redis Queue)	Background processing
Frontend	Jinja2 + htmx + Alpine.js	Server-side rendering with component macros

Deployment

GitPulse is designed to be deployed using Docker Compose:

services:
  api:           # FastAPI application
  worker:        # RQ worker (high / default / low)
  postgres:      # Database
  redis:         # Cache and queue
  gitpulse-docs: # Documentation site (Hugo)
  caddy:         # Reverse proxy with HTTPS

GitPulse does not use a scheduler or cron. All jobs are triggered by webhooks or explicit actions in the interface.

Limits and restrictions

Current restrictions. - Only supports GitLab (not GitHub, Bitbucket) - Self-hosted GitLab must be accessible from the VM - Requires a GitLab API token with sufficient rights