rift

README

rift

Syntax-aware, composable fuzzy git tool.

rift wraps the git workflows where UX is the bottleneck — staging, diffing, branching, 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 branch       # fuzzy branch switcher
rift stash        # stash manager with diff preview

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. You see what actually changed at the expression level, not what lines moved.

Composable Output

Every command supports three output modes:

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

# pipe into anything
rift branch --print | xargs git rebase
rift log --json | jq '.[] | select(.files_changed > 10)'

Interactive Staging

rift stage replaces git add -p with a two-panel TUI: file list with structural diff preview and hunk-level staging.

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 the download fails, rift falls back to built-in line diffs — 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

v0.1.0 — core commands implemented (diff, log, branch, stash, stage). Worktree management, config, and code review planned for v0.2.0.

License

MIT