Introduction to Govlin
Govlin is a Git governance product. It links every change to its ticket, pipeline, quality result and approvals, tells you what needs your attention, computes whether a release can ship and gives you the evidence to prove what happened.
Govlin was called GitGov. The code, the installer, the domain
gitgov.cloudand the repository filegitgov.tomlkeep that historical name.
The six sections
The Desktop app has a sidebar with six sections, always in the same order. Each one answers a single question.
| Section | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Action Center | What needs my attention? |
| Workspace | What am I changing? |
| Releases | Can this ship? |
| Evidence | What happened and how do I prove it? |
| Rules | What is required and with what effect? |
| Settings | How is Govlin connected? |
Everyone starts in the Action Center. Ask (Ctrl+J) is available on every screen and takes its subject from what you are looking at. Help sits below the sections.
See Using Govlin for what each section does.
How it works
- Govlin Desktop (Windows) is where people work: it prepares and sends changes, records the Git operations made from the app and computes the change impact locally.
- The Govlin server receives the Desktop events and the signed webhooks of your integrations, links each change to its tickets when it arrives, evaluates rules and releases, and keeps the records.
- Integrations send what the Desktop cannot see: GitHub (pull requests, reviews, checks), Jira (tickets), Jenkins (pipeline runs) and SonarQube (quality gate results). See Integrations.
Two principles run through the product:
- Compute, do not record. States are computed live. Opening a screen never creates records; only decisions (approve, reject, accept a risk, authorize a deployment) and evidence someone creates are recorded.
- Automatic evaluation and human decision never merge. A release shows its computed state and, separately, the decisions people recorded.
What Govlin does not do
- It does not send your source code: no file content, diff or patch leaves your machine.
- It does not run builds, tests or deployments.
- It does not certify compliance. It maps evidence to the control frameworks your organization imports; your organization and its auditor decide.
- It does not profile individual productivity or make HR decisions.
Next steps
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