GitHub is addressing small to medium-sized workflow problems that get under developers’ skin. The company announced Project Paper Cuts to fix problems, iterate on UI/UX and make improvements.

“We know that all development teams work a little differently. Since we can’t possibly consider all development practices, we turn to our community for feedback and data on how to improve our product. From this feedback, we plan and iterate on exciting new ways to support a variety of workflows,” Luke Hefson, from GitHub’s project management team, wrote in a post.  

“But what about those smaller issues you find in existing workflows? What about the usability nitpicks that bother you daily but might not be a part of our bigger product initiatives? You—the wonderful and diverse GitHub community—have been telling us about some of these smaller frustrations for a while now, and we want you to know that we’re listening.”

Project Paper Cuts is based off of GitHub’s work with the Refined GitHub browser extension that was designed to improve on the GitHub experience. According to GitHub, some of the features of the project include:

  • Unselect markers when copying and pasting the contents of a diff
  • Ability to edit a repository’s README from the root
  • Access to repositories from the profile dropdown
  • Highlighted permalink comments
  • Ability to remove files from pull requests
  • Branch names in merge notification emails
  • Ability to create pull requests from Pull Request Page
  • Ability to add a teammate from discussions
  • Ability to collapse all diffs at once
  • And the ability to copy a URL of a comment

In addition, the team says they are looking at fixing “paper cuts” that will have the most impact with the least amount of process, friction, discussion and dependencies.

“What we’re seeing and learning from the community by working on Project Paper Cuts will forever change how we work and build features. We will continue to let our community know that we hear them and that we’re building products that help all developers do their best work, faster,” Hefson wrote.