A New Way to Measure Work Done with AI

Pull requests show that code changed. Deeds tries to show what got better.

$curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danielmiessler/deeds/main/install.sh | sh

Runs on your machine. All you need is a Jev key. Source on GitHub

deeds analyze github.com/golang/go --since 90d --html report.html

1,051 commits to Go in 90 days. 1,022 of them did something deeds counts. 122 caps358 fixes668 tends

I'm not sure we're measuring AI coding work correctly.

The pull request has been the unit of software work for a long time, and it has earned that. It gives a team one clean place to discuss a change and review it before it merges. I'm not trying to replace it for that.

But as a way to measure how much work got done, especially work done with AI, I see two problems.

It's built for collaboration.
A PR exists so someone else can review your change. One person working with agents, testing and pushing straight to production, often never opens one. The share of code written that way is rising fast.
It shows change, not value.
A PR tells you code changed. A refactor, a typo fix and a revert count the same as a new capability, and a change that made things worse counts too.

As PRsrefactorreverttoken leakCSV export4 PRs

As deedstendno deedfixcap1 cap, 1 fix, 1 tend

I don't think the PR is the right unit of measurement anymore.

Deeds is my attempt to address both problems. It's a proposal, not a finished answer, and I expect parts of it to be wrong. If you see where, I'd like to hear it.

The proposal: deeds.

Deeds is a proposed alternative for measuring valuable work rather than collaborative code modifications. It works whether or not anyone opens a PR, and it only counts a change when the product got better. Each of those changes is a deed, and every deed is one of three kinds.

cap

A capability gained or deepened. Someone can now do a thing they couldn't, or do an existing thing more fully.

src/reports/export.ts
+ export function toCSV(rows: Invoice[]): string {
+   return [HEADER, ...rows.map(toLine)].join("\n");
+ }

fix

Something moved from broken to sound. Security fixes count here too.

src/server/session.ts
- log.info("session", req.headers.cookie);
+ log.info("session", redact(req.headers.cookie));

tend

Upkeep nobody sees: refactors, dependencies, performance, tests.

package.json
-   "hono": "^4.5.1",
+   "hono": "^4.6.0",

Judged from the diff

Every commit is read from what it actually changed, never from its message. Renames, reverts and busywork add no caps.

Counts stay separate

Nine caps, four fixes and six tends tells a story one blended score would hide.

No ranking of domains

A recipe app and a payments system meet on the same ground. A team that wants one number can apply its own weights on top.

Point it at any repo.

Pick a repo and a windowA local folder or a GitHub URL, over the last week, a quarter, or all time.
Every commit is judgedEach diff becomes zero or more caps, fixes and tends.
You get the reportTotals, a week-by-week trend, and who did the work. Same repo and window, same answer.

deeds analyze github.com/golang/go --since 90d

deeds github.com/golang/go

2026-07-07 → 2026-10-04 · 1051 commits (1051 cached) · judged by jev (jev-latest)

122 caps 358 fixes 668 tends

week of caps fixes tends

07-06 ▉ 2 ███ 11 ███▉ 27

07-13 ██▋ 6 ████████████ 44 ████████████ 83

07-20 ██▎ 5 ██████ 22 ██████▏ 42

07-27 █▊ 4 ███▉ 14 ███▊ 26

08-03 █▊ 4 ████▏ 15 ████▋ 32

08-10 █▊ 4 ███████▏ 26 ████████▉ 61

08-17 █████▊ 13 ██████▉ 25 ██████████▉ 75

08-24 █████▊ 13 ██████████▍ 38 █████████▎ 64

08-31 ████████████ 27 ████████▊ 32 ██████▍ 44

09-07 █▊ 4 █████████▌ 35 ███████▍ 51

09-14 ██▎ 5 ███████▋ 28 █████▎ 36

09-21 ████ 9 ██████▉ 25 ████████▋ 60

09-28 ████████▌ 19 ███████████▊ 43 █████████▌ 66

10-05 ███▏ 7 · 0 ▏ 1

by author caps fixes tends

Michael Matloob 2 6 76 ████████████████

Austin Clements 9 5 53 █████████████

Junyang Shao 31 6 16 ██████████

Mark Freeman 6 12 23 ████████

qmuntal 3 20 17 ████████

+ 166 more authors

caps newest first, 8 of 162

+ export Mask8s.Any and 3 more a90c4a7 Junyang Shao

+ export Mask8s.None and 3 more 9bdbfc8 Junyang Shao

+ export Mask8s.All and 3 more 8a2ef7e Junyang Shao

+ export Mask8s.Next and 3 more 7257a19 Junyang Shao

+ export Mask8s.First and 3 more ad2488e Junyang Shao

− export Load and 8 more f662110 Junyang Shao

+ export Mask8sAllTrue and 3 more 6017e3e Junyang Shao

+ rewrite arm64 8921b16 Junyang Shao

Real output: the last 90 days of golang/go, judged by Jev on 2026-10-05. Add --html report.html for the full page.

Or just ask your agent.

Deeds ships as a Claude Code plugin. It installs the deeds command and a skill that knows how to use it, so you can ask in plain words and get the report back.

>/plugin marketplace add danielmiessler/deeds

>/plugin install deeds@workdeeds

claude ~/code/go

show me deeds progress

deeds analyze . --since 7d

26 caps

41 fixes

67 tends

This week. Junyang Shao landed ten of the 26 caps, most of them new SIMD operations.

how many caps did Junyang Shao land this month?

deeds analyze . --since 30d

Eleven caps, nearly all new SIMD operations such as Float32s.Div and BroadcastFloat32s.

Try it on your own repo.

Deeds runs on your machine, and all you need is a Jev key: no OpenAI or Anthropic key. Each commit's diff goes only to Jev, with anything shaped like a secret stripped out first. There is no account and no telemetry.

$curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danielmiessler/deeds/main/install.sh | sh

Read the code on GitHub

A New Way to Measure Work Done with AI

I'm not sure we're measuring AI coding work correctly.

It's built for collaboration.

It shows change, not value.

Go's last 90 days, counted two ways.

Counting activity

Counting deeds