I want to ship software and it doesn't want me to ship software
For eighteen years, Mitchell Hashimoto didn't merely use GitHub — he inhabited it, the way one inhabits a home. But homes require upkeep, and when a platform that once inspired joy begins to obstruct the very work it was built to support, loyalty eventually yields to necessity. Hashimoto, co-founder of Hashicorp and creator of the Ghostty terminal emulator, has announced he is migrating his project away from GitHub after documenting near-daily outages that made serious development untenable. His departure is less a protest than a quiet reckoning — a reminder that even the deepest institutional trust erodes when reliability is repeatedly broken.
- For a full month, Hashimoto kept a journal of GitHub failures — pull request reviews blocked, Actions down, Elasticsearch errors causing outright failures — and nearly every day earned a mark.
- The frustration turned personal and raw: he described lashing out, hurting people's feelings, and feeling abandoned by a platform he once called the place where he had been happiest.
- Ghostty, a well-regarded terminal emulator with serious infrastructure dependencies, cannot simply be moved overnight — the migration requires careful negotiation with multiple commercial and open-source alternatives.
- A read-only GitHub mirror will remain, and Hashimoto leaves the door open to returning — but only if Microsoft delivers concrete reliability improvements, not reassurances.
- His departure carries outsized symbolic weight: when a foundational figure in developer infrastructure publicly walks away after eighteen years, it reframes GitHub's outages from inconvenience to institutional failure.
Mitchell Hashimoto joined GitHub in February 2008, when the platform was still young, and stayed for eighteen years — not as a passive user but as someone who genuinely loved the place. He studied how maintainers handled difficult situations, bookmarked projects to explore on vacation, and by his own account, was happiest there. That history makes his recent announcement all the more striking.
Hashimoto is the co-founder of Hashicorp and the creator of Ghostty, a terminal emulator praised for its speed and originality. For the past month, he kept a private journal, marking each day that GitHub outages prevented him from working. Almost every day had a mark. Pull request reviews went dark for hours when Actions failed. An Elasticsearch outage caused pull requests to fail entirely. These were not edge cases — they were daily interruptions to shipping real software.
The frustration he expressed publicly was unusually candid. He described the experience in the language of a deteriorating relationship: wanting to be present, wanting to work, and feeling the platform actively resisting him. "It is irrationally personal," he wrote — and then chose to leave anyway.
The migration will not be immediate. Ghostty has deep dependencies on GitHub's infrastructure, and Hashimoto is in discussions with several alternative platforms. A read-only mirror will remain on GitHub, and his personal work stays there for now. But the project that matters most to him is moving on.
He has not closed the door permanently. If Microsoft delivers genuine reliability improvements rather than promises, he says he would consider returning. But after nearly two decades, the platform that once made him happiest has become a place where serious work can no longer be counted on — and he is choosing to work somewhere else.
Mitchell Hashimoto joined GitHub in February 2008, back when the platform was still finding its footing. For eighteen years, he lived there—not just as a developer storing code, but as someone who genuinely loved the place. He would doom-scroll GitHub issues on vacation. He studied how other maintainers handled difficult situations. He kept bookmarks of projects to examine during time off. Even on his honeymoon, he made time for it. GitHub, he once said, was where he had been happiest.
Then something broke.
Hashimoto is the co-founder of Hashicorp and the creator of Ghostty, a terminal emulator that has earned praise for its speed and for bringing fresh ideas to a category of software that has been around for decades. It's serious work—the kind of project that demands a reliable foundation. For the past month, he kept a journal. Every day that GitHub's outages prevented him from working, he marked an X. Almost every single day had one.
On the day he wrote his public statement, he couldn't review pull requests for two hours because GitHub Actions was down. A few days later, an Elasticsearch failure caused pull requests to fail outright. These weren't theoretical problems or minor inconveniences. They were daily obstacles to shipping software.
The frustration that poured out in his post was raw and personal. "I've been angry about it. I've hurt people's feelings. I've been lashing out," he wrote. "Because GitHub is failing me, every single day, and it is personal. It is irrationally personal." He described the relationship in terms that sounded like a breakup: "I want to be there but it doesn't want me to be there. I want to get work done and it doesn't want me to get work done. I want to ship software and it doesn't want me to ship software."
After eighteen years, he decided to leave.
The decision carries weight precisely because Hashimoto is not a casual user or a critic looking for attention. He is a foundational figure in modern infrastructure tooling, someone whose loyalty to GitHub was genuine and long-tested. His departure signals something real about the platform's current state—not a perception problem, but a reliability problem that affects actual work.
Hashimoto is moving Ghostty to another platform. He's in discussions with multiple providers, both commercial and open-source alternatives. The migration will take time; Ghostty has deep dependencies on GitHub's infrastructure that can't be ripped out overnight. He's leaving a read-only mirror of the project on GitHub and keeping his personal work there for now. But the main project, the one that matters most to him and his team, is going elsewhere.
He remains open to returning if GitHub delivers real improvements rather than promises. But for now, after nearly two decades, he's done. The platform that made him happiest has stopped being a place where serious work can happen. And he's choosing to work somewhere else.
Notable Quotes
GitHub is no longer a place for serious work if it just blocks you out for hours per day, every day.— Mitchell Hashimoto
After 18 years, I've got to go.— Mitchell Hashimoto
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What made this moment different from other frustrations developers have had with platforms over the years?
The timing and the scale. He wasn't complaining about a single outage or a bad quarter. He documented nearly daily failures over a month. For someone who has been there since 2008, who genuinely loved the place, that accumulation breaks something.
Do you think this is about GitHub specifically, or about the broader fragility of centralized infrastructure?
Both. GitHub is the de facto standard—there's nowhere else most developers want to be. That's what makes the outages so maddening. You can't just shrug and move on. You're trapped.
He said he's still in discussions with alternatives. What does that tell you about the state of the market?
That there's finally enough pain that even loyal users are looking. But also that there's no obvious replacement. If there were, he'd already be gone.
The emotional language in his post—"irrationally personal"—that's unusual for a technical complaint.
Because it's not really a technical complaint. It's a betrayal. He invested eighteen years in a place. He loved it. And it stopped working. That's personal no matter how you frame it.
What happens if other major developers start making the same calculation?
That's the real question. One person leaving is a story. A pattern is a reckoning.