Codex Stellarum
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    21 April 2026

    How to Turn Your GitHub Contributions into Art

    Codex Stellarum · 12 min read

    Somewhere in your GitHub profile is a grid of green squares that represents every day you wrote code. It is probably the most complete record of your working life that exists, and it lives on a webpage that you glance at occasionally and nobody else ever sees.

    Getting it off the screen and onto a wall is not a new idea. Developers have been printing contribution graphs for years. But the options range from free and rough to polished and expensive, and nobody has written a proper comparison of what is actually out there.

    This is that comparison. Every option, what it costs, what it looks like, and who it is for.

    OPTION 1: DO IT YOURSELF

    You are a developer. You could build this.

    The GitHub API gives you everything you need. Hit the GraphQL API or scrape your contribution calendar, extract the data, map it to colours, render it as an SVG or canvas image, and send it to a print shop. You have done harder things before lunch.

    In practice, it takes longer than you think. The contribution data is straightforward. The rendering is straightforward. But getting it to actually look good on paper - choosing the right resolution, the right colour mapping, the right paper stock, handling the DPI conversion, adding margins for framing, making it not look like a homework assignment - that is where the weekend goes.

    We know because we tried. The first version of Codex Stellarum was a manual job. Fetch the data, write a renderer, tweak the output, order a test print, realise the colours look different on paper than on screen, adjust, reprint. It took longer than expected. The result was worth it, but the process was not something we would recommend to someone who just wants a nice print on their wall by Friday.

    That said, if you enjoy the process - if building the renderer is part of the fun - then do it yourself. You will learn things about print design, colour spaces, and DPI that you did not know you did not know. And the result will be entirely yours.

    Cost: Free (plus printing, usually £10-30 at a local print shop). Time: A weekend if you are fast. Longer if you care about the details. Result: Whatever you make it. Could be terrible. Could be beautiful. Depends on you.

    OPTION 2: SCREENSHOT AND PRINT

    The simplest possible approach. Go to your GitHub profile, take a screenshot of your contribution graph, crop it, and upload it to a poster printing service like Photobox, Shutterfly, or your local print shop.

    This costs almost nothing and takes five minutes. The result is exactly what you would expect: a screenshot on a poster. It looks like a screenshot on a poster. The resolution is usually poor because the contribution graph on screen is not very large, so when you blow it up to poster size you get visible pixels.

    If you just want something on the wall and you do not care about quality, this works. If you are giving it as a gift, the recipient will see the effort you put in, which is to say: almost none. That might be fine. It might not.

    Cost: £5-15. Time: Five minutes. Result: A blurry screenshot on paper.

    OPTION 3: REDBUBBLE AND GENERIC PRINT-ON-DEMAND

    Redbubble, Etsy, and similar marketplaces have independent artists selling GitHub-themed prints. Some are generic - a stock contribution graph with no personalisation. Some are slightly customised.

    The quality varies wildly. Some sellers use thick, archival paper. Others use the cheapest stock available. The designs tend toward the playful and geeky - bright colours, comic-style layouts, "I code therefore I am" text overlays.

    The main limitation is personalisation. Most of these are not your contribution graph. They are a contribution graph. A generic pattern that represents the concept of coding, not your specific history. Some sellers will create a custom print from your data for an extra fee, but the turnaround time is usually a week or more and the quality is inconsistent.

    Cost: £10-40 depending on size and seller. Time: A few days to a couple of weeks. Result: Generic developer-themed wall art. Fun, but not personal.

    OPTION 4: CODEPRINTS

    CodePrints (codeprints.dev) is probably the best-known service for printing GitHub contribution graphs. You enter your username, they generate a poster of your green grid, and you order a print. They have been around since 2019 and have built a solid product.

    The prints are good quality. They offer framed and unframed options. The contribution graph is rendered clearly and accurately. GitLab and Bitbucket support is listed as coming soon on their site.

    The design is faithful to the original GitHub aesthetic: a grid of coloured squares on a dark or light background. If you want your actual GitHub graph on your wall, recognisable as a GitHub graph, this is the best way to get it. Their team prints feature is also solid - you can generate a poster from a shared repository.

    The trade-off is that it looks like what it is: a GitHub contribution graph. Developers recognise it instantly. Non-developers see a grid of coloured squares and ask what it is. It is wall art for the home office, not the living room. And there is nothing wrong with that - it just depends on where you want to hang it.

    Cost: From about €25 for a poster, from €49 framed or on canvas. Time: 1-2 weeks delivery. Result: A clean, well-made print of your GitHub grid. Recognisably GitHub.

    OPTION 5: COMMITGRAPH / BITTI GITTI

    CommitGraph takes a different approach. Instead of a poster, they laser-engrave your contribution graph onto wooden objects - phone amplifiers, desk blocks, acrylic prints. The wooden phone amplifier is their signature product: a handcrafted speaker that passively amplifies your phone''s sound, with your contribution graph engraved on the side.

    It is a genuinely interesting object. The craftsmanship is real. As a desk piece it works well - functional, personal, and a conversation starter. The limitation is the same as CodePrints: the visual language is the GitHub grid. Squares. Green. Recognisably a developer thing.

    For wall art specifically, their acrylic block prints are the relevant product. They look clean and modern but are relatively small.

    Cost: From about $75 for the wooden amplifier, $45-60 for acrylic blocks. Time: 1-3 weeks. Result: A physical object with your grid engraved. Unique. Desk-friendly.

    OPTION 6: CODEX STELLARUM

    This is us, so take this section with the appropriate grain of salt.

    Codex Stellarum takes your contribution data and renders it as a vintage star atlas. Every day you wrote code becomes a star. Bright days are large and luminous. Quiet days are small and faint. The pattern of your coding history appears as a celestial chart - the kind of thing you would see in a seventeenth-century observatory or a rare book collection.

    Three layouts: Chronicle (a vertical timeline of years), Planisphere (concentric rings), and Helix (a spiralling galaxy). Four themes: Observatory (gold on navy), Blueprint (white on deep blue), Parchment (dark on aged paper), and Minimalist (clean, modern). Your name is rendered in Latin small caps. A magnitude legend shows the star scale. Coordinate markings frame the border.

    The prints are produced on 200gsm enhanced matte art paper using Giclee technique - the same archival process used by galleries. We also offer digital downloads as high-resolution PNG files if you want to handle your own printing.

    The thing that makes this different from every other option on this list is that it does not look like a GitHub page. A developer will see their commit history in it. Everyone else will see a beautiful star chart. It works in a living room, an office, a hallway. It does not require an explanation.

    We also build organisation atlases - aggregating all public repository activity across a company into a single print. And we offer bulk pricing for teams.

    Cost: From £25 for prints, £10 for digital download. Time: Digital downloads delivered in minutes via email. Prints ship in 5-14 days. Result: Your contribution data rendered as astronomical art. Unrecognisable as a GitHub graph.

    SO WHICH ONE?

    It depends on what you want.

    If you want a fun project and you enjoy building things: do it yourself. The process is the point.

    If you want something quick and free and you do not care about quality: screenshot and print.

    If you want your GitHub grid on the wall, faithfully reproduced: CodePrints.

    If you want a unique desk object: CommitGraph.

    If you want something that looks like art first and data second - something a non-developer would hang in their home without knowing what it represents: Codex Stellarum.

    The real question is not which service to use. It is what you want people to see when they look at your wall. A grid of green squares that says "I am a developer." Or a sky full of stars that says "something beautiful happened here."

    See what your contributions look like as a star atlas. Free to preview. codexstellarum.com

    Write about developers or developer tools? Join our affiliate programme - 25% revenue share, 10% off for your audience.

    ✦

    See your own sky.

    Username, org, or repo - try or . Free to preview, prints from £25.

    Or start from the GitHub star atlas maker or the custom GitHub poster.

    Write about developers? Join our affiliate programme - 20% revenue share, 5% off for your audience.

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