Near the end of every team project, the same conversation comes up. "It feels like I did everything." "I have no idea what they worked on." The name Lofy actually started from this exact moment, as a playful nod to "who is loafing?", to the question everyone quietly asks.
But that question is riskier than it looks. Raise it without evidence and it turns into a fight. Don't raise it and it builds up inside.
Why memory isn't reliable
People remember their own work best. You clearly remember fixing a bug until 3 a.m., but you have no way of knowing what your teammates were doing at the same time. So it's common for everyone on a team to feel their share is bigger than it was. Ask four people how much they each contributed, add it up, and you'll easily pass 100%.
Nobody is lying. Everyone just sees different things. That's why when memories collide, there's no answer.
Put the record in the middle
The fix is to put the record, not a person, at the center of the conversation. "You didn't do it" and "Here's what the history shows" can say the same thing and land completely differently.
The repository already has the record. Paste your team's repository link into Lofy and you can see:
- Commits, lines changed, and contribution share by both measures for each contributor
- The features each contributor likely worked on
- How the project progressed over time
- Who worked when
- Whether anyone did a lot of last-minute work
You can turn the result into a share link and post it in your team chat. Everyone looking at the same screen matters more than one person reviewing it alone and passing judgment.
An order for looking at it together
1. Start with features, not numbers
Start with the contribution ranking and the mood stiffens fast. First look at what each person built. When "Oh, you built this part too" comes first, the rest of the conversation goes much more smoothly.
2. Ask the person with lower numbers first
If someone's numbers came out low, ask before you accuse. There can be many reasons.
- They may have taken on work that doesn't show up in commits, like planning, design, research, or preparing the presentation.
- They may have worked next to a teammate and committed under that person's name.
- Their part may have been few lines but genuinely hard.
- They may have committed under a different name or email and been counted as someone else.
- If they really didn't take part much, they may not have known what to do, or never found a way in.
That last case is more common than you'd think. When one strong person builds everything quickly, the others can't find anything to pick up.
3. Listen to the person with higher numbers, too
If contribution is heavily concentrated in one person, it may be because they're great, or because the work was split badly. Ask whether they were worn out carrying it alone, or whether they felt uneasy handing things off.
4. Decide what to change next time
If the conversation ends with deciding who was wrong, nothing is gained. It should always end with what we'll do differently next time.
Preventing it in the first place
Arguments about contribution usually break out after the project ends, but the cause is at the start.
- Split the work into issues at the start, with owners. Who owns what is on record from day one.
- Keep work small. When one person holds one big chunk, everyone else has to wait.
- Run an analysis halfway through. After the project, nothing can be changed. Halfway through, the work can still be rebalanced.
- Put work outside the code on record too. Commit meeting notes and planning docs to the repository and that work shows up as contribution.
- Credit the people you worked with. You can add co-authors to a commit message for work done together.
We especially recommend the third one. Just looking at the record together once in the middle of a project helps people notice on their own, "Am I doing too much alone?" or "Have I been too hands-off?"
How to use this tool
Lofy isn't built to single anyone out. That's why it explains numbers instead of just reading them out, and why it always shows features alongside contribution. Contribution numbers are signals, not verdicts.
If you need to explain contribution to an instructor or TA for a group assignment, show who built what along with the numbers. Noting the work a lower-numbered teammate did that never made it into commits makes the material much fairer.
Records are most useful not for finding out who slacked off, but for recognizing the work everyone did.