rift

README

rift

Syntax-aware, worktree-aware, composable fuzzy git tool.

rift wraps the git workflows where UX is the bottleneck — staging, diffing, log browsing, stashing — with structural understanding via difftastic and composable output that works for both humans and scripts.

rift              # contextual launchpad
rift diff         # syntax-aware diff browser
rift stage        # interactive staging with hunk granularity
rift log          # structural commit explorer
rift stash        # stash manager with diff preview

rift is worktree-aware — every command reads correctly inside bare-repo and linked-worktree layouts — but it does not manage worktrees or branches. For creating, switching, and pruning worktrees, pair it with worktrunk.

Why

forgit and git-fuzzy proved that fuzzy search over git objects is a massive UX win. But they're shell scripts piping strings through fzf — every diff is flat text, and you can't pipe the output into anything.

lazygit is the gold standard for git TUIs, but it's a resident app you live inside, with no composable output and line-based diffs.

rift occupies the space between them: transient (invoke, act, return to shell), structural (diffs understand your code's syntax), and composable (every command has --print and --json modes).

Key Features

Structural diffs

Powered by difftastic: reformatting noise disappears and you see what actually changed at the expression level, with syntax highlighting and intra-line emphasis. When difftastic isn't on your $PATH, rift falls back to git's own diff (with word-level and whitespace highlighting) — toggle between the two engines with e.

Split-pane browsing

rift diff and rift log are two-panel browsers: a fuzzy-filterable list on the left, a structural diff preview on the right. Navigate with vim keys, jump hunk-to-hunk, and keep your place with a scrollbar and a sticky file header. Colored file-type icons and dimmed directories make the list scan fast. In the log, press ⏎ to drill into a commit's files, or c / r to cherry-pick / revert the selected commit.

rift stash shares the same browser for stash entries and their diffs:

Test lens

Add --tests to rift diff or rift log to read a change by the tests it touches instead of its files — handy for reviewing agent-generated code. Each spec is marked by how the diff changed it: + added, → renamed, ~ modified (the ~ cases, where an assertion can be quietly weakened under an unchanged name, are the ones worth a close read). The preview scrolls to the selected test and names it in the border. Toggle live between the file view and the tests view with t; works on the working tree, --staged, or a commit range, and supports --print / --json. Tests are extracted across Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, Ruby, Python, and Rust — including t.Run subtests and table-driven cases.

Review tracking

In rift diff, press r to mark the selected file reviewed (a ✓ replaces its status glyph) and U to show only the files you haven't reviewed yet — so you can walk a large change file by file and watch the list shrink as you tick each one off. A mark is keyed to the file's content, so it resets the moment the file changes (e.g. an agent edits it again) and re-applies on revert, making it easy to re-review only what's new. Marks persist per worktree (in .git/rift/, uncommitted); --unreviewed narrows --print / --json / --name-only to the not-yet-reviewed files.

Interactive staging

rift stage replaces git add -p with a two-panel TUI: a file list with structural diff preview and hunk-level staging, the active hunk clearly marked in the gutter.

Composable output

Every command is interactive by default but never traps you — each supports --print (plain selection) and --json (structured) modes:

rift log                              # interactive TUI
rift log --print                      # one commit hash per line
rift log --json                       # structured JSON

# pipe into anything
rift diff --print | xargs -r "$EDITOR"          # open every changed file
rift log --json | jq '.[] | select(.files_changed > 10)'

Shared TUI

Every screen behaves the same: type / to fuzzy-filter, ⇥ to switch panes, vim keys (j/k, gg/G, ctrl-d/u) to scroll, \ to toggle the diff layout, y to yank the selection, o to open a file in $EDITOR at the change, ? for the keybinding overlay, and esc to step back.

Installation

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/madhermit/rift/main/install.sh | bash

Or with Go 1.25+:

go install github.com/madhermit/rift@latest

Pre-built binaries for Linux and macOS are available on the Releases page.

External Tools

On first run, rift automatically downloads difftastic to ~/.local/share/rift/bin/ if it's not already on your $PATH. If it's unavailable (offline, or the download fails), rift falls back to git's own diff with word-level highlighting — no external tools are required.

Agent-Friendly

The --json output on every command gives agents structural understanding that raw git can't provide:

# inspect changes as structured data
rift diff --json | jq '.[] | select(.status == "modified")'

# list recent commits
rift log --json -n 10 | jq '.[].hash'

Status

The core consumption commands — diff, log, stash, stage — are implemented and meant to be a daily driver (latest tag v0.5.0), with ongoing work on the diff/log reading experience: colored file icons, scrollbars, sticky file headers, and a structural fallback when difftastic is absent. Config and local code review are planned next.

Worktree and branch management are intentionally out of scope — rift stays worktree-aware and pairs with worktrunk.

See CHANGELOG.md for release notes.

License

MIT