The 30-Second Problem That Took Me 3 Weeks to Solve

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I have a confession: I spend more time thinking about git branch names than I should

You know that moment when you’re ready to dive into a GitHub issue, fingers on the keyboard, and then… you freeze. What do I call this branch? fix-login? feature/auth-improvements? issue-247-whatever?

It’s such a tiny thing, but it kept breaking my flow. Every. Single. Time.

The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back

Last month, I caught myself spending 5 minutes on a branch name for a 10-minute fix. I literally opened three different repositories to see how I’d named similar branches before.

That’s when I knew I had a problem.

Enter AI (Because Why Not?)

I’d been playing around with different AI APIs for side projects, and it hit me: why not let AI handle this annoying decision?

The idea was simple: feed a GitHub issue to an AI model, let it generate a clean branch name, and automatically create the branch. No more decision fatigue.

Three weeks later, gbai was born.

What I Learned

Building this taught me something interesting about developer tools: the best ones solve problems you didn’t even realize you had.

I thought I was just building a branch name generator. But what I actually built was a way to eliminate a tiny source of friction that was happening dozens of times per week.

The tool analyzes your existing branch patterns, works with multiple AI providers (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, even local Ollama), and handles everything from full GitHub URLs to simple issue numbers. 

# Before
git checkout -b uhh-what-should-i-call-this

# After  
gbai 123
# Creates: feature/123-add-user-authentication

The Real Win

It’s not just about saving 30 seconds. It’s about removing that tiny mental speed bump that pulls you out of the zone.

Now when I see an issue I want to tackle, I just run gbai 123 and I’m instantly in a properly named branch, ready to code.

Sometimes the best tools are the ones that make the invisible friction disappear.

Try it yourself: npm install -g gbai

Source: github.com/that-one-arab/gbai

What tiny friction points in your workflow drive you crazy? I’m always curious about the small things that end up having big impacts.

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