A terminal UI for cultivating git repositories, worktrees, and the work inside them.
If you juggle several feature branches at once and find git worktree add painful to drive by hand, grove keeps all of them in one place: navigate between worktrees in the sidebar, run commands in embedded terminals, and review diffs without ever leaving the TUI.
ASCII preview (when the screenshot can't render)
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PROJECTS ┃ [▶ Term 1] [Term 2] [+] [Diff: local] │
│ ────────────────────────────── ┃ ─────────────────────────────────────────── │
│ ▼ grove ┃ │
│ ○ main ✓ ┃ ~/grove/feat-sidebar$ cargo test │
│ ● feat/sidebar +4 ↑1 ● ┃ Compiling grove v1.3.0 │
│ ● fix/deps ~2 ⚠ ┃ Finished dev in 3.42s │
│ ┃ running 42 tests ... ok │
│ ▼ dotfiles ┃ │
│ ○ main ✓ ┃ ~/grove/feat-sidebar$ █ │
│ ● wip/zsh +1 ~3 ┃ │
│ ┃ │
│ ───────────────────────────── ┃ │
│ ⟳ fetching origin (grove) ┃ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
- Sidebar with live git status badges per worktree (staged / modified / ahead / behind / conflicts; see Status badges)
- Per-worktree "thinking" / "needs attention" indicator so you can tell at a glance which shells are busy or waiting on input
- Embedded PTY terminals — one or more per worktree, kept alive in the background
- Local diff view (staged + unstaged) and branch diff view (
<base>...HEAD) - GitHub PR and CI status polling shown alongside the git badges
- Background
git fetchper repo so branch lists are fresh when you need them - Activity footer in the sidebar showing what's currently running, plus a warning when GitHub auth is missing
- Unified, filter-as-you-type modal for creating worktrees off any local or remote branch
- Auto-detected base branch (
origin/HEAD) per repo, with a configurable fallback - Mouse support — click to focus, scroll wheel in terminals and diffs
- Persisted UI state — reopens exactly where you left off
- Single binary — no tmux, no system services, just
giton yourPATH
Homebrew (macOS and Linux):
brew tap sebasv/grove
brew install groveOr download a prebuilt binary for your platform from the releases page.
grove # open with whatever you've already configured
grove . # treat the current dir as the target
grove ~/dev/my-repo # target a single repo (added to config if new)
grove ~/dev # scan one level down for repos and pick which to addWhen you point grove at a directory containing several repos, it shows a confirmation modal listing every repo it found — toggle them on/off and confirm to add the selected ones.
On first launch with no path, the sidebar is empty. Press a to add a repository — type or tab-complete the path, hit Enter. Repeat for each repo you want grove to track.
That's it. Worktrees inside each repo are discovered automatically, and your choices are persisted in config.toml for next time.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
j / k |
Move cursor in sidebar |
h / l |
Collapse / expand repo |
Enter |
Activate worktree |
a / R |
Add / remove repository |
w / W |
New / remove worktree |
Ctrl+T / Ctrl+W |
New / close terminal tab |
Ctrl+H / Ctrl+L |
Previous / next terminal tab |
Ctrl+Space |
Cycle focus: sidebar ↔ main pane |
Ctrl+\ |
Toggle terminal scrollback mode |
Ctrl+D |
Toggle diff view |
m |
Toggle diff mode (local ↔ branch) |
r |
Refresh statuses and kick off a fetch for every repo |
F2 |
Cycle theme (default → tokyonight → gruvbox) |
? |
Help overlay |
q / Ctrl+C |
Quit |
See ? inside grove for the full reference.
PR and CI status badges only appear when grove can authenticate to GitHub. It looks for credentials in this order:
GITHUB_TOKENorGH_TOKENenvironment variable.gh auth token— works aftergh auth login(including the SSH-key flow).
Without either, grove still runs; the PR and CI badges just stay blank.
Each worktree row carries up to two clusters of badges: git working-tree state (left) and GitHub PR + CI state (right).
Working tree. Shown left-to-right by priority — most urgent first.
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
✓ (green) |
Clean working tree, in sync with upstream |
⚠ (red) |
Merge conflicts present (always shown first) |
+N (green) |
N files staged for commit |
~N (yellow) |
N files modified but not staged |
-N (red) |
N files deleted |
↑N (dim) |
N commits ahead of upstream |
↓N (dim) |
N commits behind upstream |
Agent activity. Grove watches each shell's window-title and bell signals to surface what's happening per worktree:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
! (warn) |
A shell rang the terminal bell (BEL) — likely waiting for input. Cleared when you focus the worktree. |
… (dim) |
Shell signalled "thinking": its window title starts with a braille spinner glyph (Claude Code, gum, oh-my-zsh prompts), or — for shells that don't set a title — it wrote PTY output in the last few seconds. |
| (none) | Idle |
The thinking signal is precise for any TUI that uses an OSC 0/2 spinner — for Claude Code that's the ⠂ <prompt> cycle while streaming, switching to ✳ <prompt> once done. Bell is the high-confidence "needs attention" indicator since most readline-based prompts ring it.
Pull request and CI. Pulled from GitHub when grove can find a token (GH_TOKEN, GITHUB_TOKEN, or gh auth login). When unauthenticated and at least one repo has a GitHub remote, the sidebar footer shows ⚠ PRs: not authenticated.
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
● (green) |
Open PR |
◐ (yellow) |
Draft PR |
✓● (dim green) |
PR merged |
● (dim) |
PR closed without merging |
✗ (red) |
CI failing on the PR |
⟳ (yellow) |
CI pending on the PR |
CI passing or unconfigured is intentionally silent — no glyph after the PR badge means everything is fine.
The bottom of the sidebar shows what grove is doing in the background — fetches, status refreshes, PR polls, scans. Idle = blank. The same row carries the GitHub-auth warning when applicable. This is the answer to "why did that badge just change?".
Grove reads an optional TOML config for defaults and per-repo overrides. Run grove --print-paths to see where grove stores config, state, and logs. Edits are picked up next launch; syntax errors fall back to defaults rather than refusing to start (the error is logged).
# macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/grove/config.toml
# Linux: ~/.config/grove/config.toml
[general]
default_base_branch = "main" # fallback when origin/HEAD isn't set
# worktree_root = "~/worktrees" # optional; default is next to the repo
fetch_cadence_secs = 300 # background fetch interval per repo (0 disables)
[theme]
base = "default" # default | tokyonight | gruvbox
[[repos]]
name = "my-project"
path = "/Users/you/dev/my-project"
base_branch = "master" # optional per-repo override
# worktree_root = "/work/my-proj" # optional per-repo overrideGrove is stable and evolving. If something doesn't work, feels off, or you have an idea — please open an issue. Pull requests are welcome too; check the issues list for anything tagged good first issue or just reach out before starting something large. design/DESIGN.md is the place to start if you want context on how grove is put together before opening a PR.
MIT