Papercuts: The little fixes that made a big difference at GitHub
How fixing the smallest annoyances helped rebuild trust, momentum, and a better developer experience at GitHub.
Software is a lot like a well-loved workshop. Over time, the tools you use every day start to show their wear—knobs loosen, screws go missing, and that one drawer always sticks just enough to be annoying. None of these things are catastrophic, but together, they make the space feel a little less functional, a little more frustrating. And at some point, you stop just working around the problems and move on to a new project, abandoning your half-done fixes and leaving behind a growing pile of unfinished work.
That was GitHub in 2018.
At the time, we had plenty of big, ambitious projects in the works—stuff that took months, even years, to build. But alongside those, there was a growing pile of small, daily annoyances. The kind of things that weren’t broken, exactly, but still made people groan every time they ran into them.
Developers weren’t just complaining. They had receipts.
A few years earlier, the Dear GitHub letter had gone viral—a crowdsourced list of developer pain points and long-standing GitHub issues. It was a love letter, but the kind where someone says, "I love you, but you really need to get your act together."
Then Microsoft acquired GitHub, and suddenly, every move was under scrutiny. Some developers feared change, wondering if GitHub would lose its way. Others doubted GitHub was even paying attention.
This wasn’t just a moment of uncertainty—it was an opportunity. A chance to prove, in no uncertain terms: We hear you. And we’re fixing things.
The Papercuts Project: Fixing the Stuff That Annoyed You
We called it Papercuts, borrowing inspiration from Ubuntu’s One Hundred Papercuts initiative—a project focused on fixing small but meaningful usability issues. The kind of things that aren’t show-stopping bugs but still make using a product feel just a little worse.
The idea was simple: Fix as many of these as possible, as fast as possible.
But instead of treating these fixes like a side hustle, we made them the project. We built a system to:
Triage issues from the Dear GitHub list and community feedback.
Prioritize using a simple heuristic:
Is this a widely felt pain point?
Is it easy to fix relative to its impact?
Will fixing it make GitHub feel noticeably better?
Ship fixes. Fast. Every single week.
Some fixes were tiny—a single-line change. Others were more involved. But we didn’t bundle them into a big release. We shipped them continuously, like fixing that squeaky door hinge before moving on to the next.
Why It Worked
Shipping fixes was one thing. Making sure developers saw them? That was just as important.
Every time we fixed something, we told the story. We posted updates on Twitter, Hacker News, and we even talked about Papercuts at GitHub Universe. And we didn’t just say "Fixed X bug." We showed it, often with GIFs of the change in action.
This did two things:
It proved we were listening. Developers saw their frustrations being fixed in real-time.
It built momentum. The more we shipped, the more developers engaged. They started flagging even more small but fixable issues. It became a virtuous cycle.
One of the biggest surprises? The impact was bigger than just the fixes themselves.
The Microsoft acquisition had put GitHub under the spotlight. A lot of people assumed GitHub would either stagnate or get worse. But Papercuts did the opposite—it made GitHub feel alive.
Instead of saying, "We care about developers," we showed it.
What This Means for Any Product Team
The Papercuts approach worked for GitHub, but it applies to any product:
Fixing small annoyances builds goodwill fast. These aren’t the things that make headlines, but they make people love your product more.
Momentum matters. Shipping continuously creates a sense of progress, which is energizing—for both users and your team.
Talk about what you’re fixing. A silent fix is a wasted opportunity. Show the work.
Sometimes, making a product better isn’t about launching the next moonshot feature. Sometimes, it’s just about fixing the stuff that’s been annoying people for way too long.
And just like in a workshop, when you finally oil that sticky drawer and tighten the wobbly handle, suddenly, everything feels a little smoother. A little better. A little more like the place you loved working in the first place.
