Strand

A fast, keyboard-first Git client — built for reviewing what AI coding agents do to your code.

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Keyboard-first: almost every action is operable from the keyboard alone — never keyboard-only, the mouse stays first-class. Shortcuts are listed below and every global one is rebindable in Settings → Keyboard.

Keyboard shortcuts

Mod is ⌘ on macOS, Ctrl elsewhere. All of the following are configurable in Settings → Keyboard (also reachable via the palette: "Settings: Keyboard shortcuts").

Shortcut	Action
Mod+K	Command palette
Mod+O	Open repository
Mod+,	Settings
Mod+1…5	Local Changes · All Commits · Reflog · Review · Worktrees
Mod+Tab / Mod+Shift+Tab	Next / previous repository
Mod+E	Switch repository (quick-switcher)
Mod+P	Push
Mod+Shift+P	Pull
Mod+Shift+Y	Fetch
Mod+Shift+S	Sync (fetch + pull + push)
Mod+Shift+E	Open in editor
Mod+Shift+C	Open in terminal
Mod+R	Refresh
Mod+Shift+T	Toggle light/dark theme

Surface-local keys (not rebindable, documented in Settings → Keyboard): Mod+Enter commit · Mod+F search in file or diff · / search commits · j/k walk the file list · n/p step change blocks · Shift+J/Shift+K scroll the diff · palette ↑↓/↵/⇥/Esc.

Strand is a native, cross-platform Git client (Tauri 2 + Rust + React) with a dedicated surface for reviewing an agent's changes: whole-file-context diffs, a review queue, and worktree-aware baselines that include what the agent already staged or committed. It's also a complete everyday Git client — staging, commit graph, interactive rebase, stashes, tags — and it's keyboard-first, but never keyboard-only: almost every action works from the keyboard alone, and the mouse stays first-class.

Features

• Review view (⌘4) — read an agent's changes as whole files with the edits inline, not isolated hunks. A file-tree queue tracks what you've reviewed, a pinnable baseline captures everything since a commit — including work the agent already staged or committed — and a change map beside the scrollbar shows where every edit sits in the file (click to jump).
• Hosted pull requests — browse the latest 100 GitHub or Azure DevOps PRs for the active repository, with the active PR for your checked-out branch opening and being followed automatically even before the PR view is opened. Create a PR or draft for the checked-out branch from the toolbar or command palette, choosing its title, description, and target branch; Strand publishes the checked-out branch first when it is not on the repository remote yet. Optionally draft the editable title and description from the committed branch delta using the configured Codex or Claude Code subscription. Persistent Follow controls and native desktop notifications surface new comments, review decisions, failed checks, pushes, and merged/closed state. Refreshes keep existing content, focus, tabs, drafts, and diffs in place while lightweight activity is revalidated in the background. The searchable inbox filters All, Authored, and Completed PRs using the signed-in provider identity while keeping the latest-100 query shallow. Each PR gets compact, toolbar-centered Summary, Timeline, and Code tabs: read rendered Markdown descriptions, follow commits/comments/lifecycle events on one chronology rail, compose top-level comments from Summary or Timeline with one preserved draft, and inspect lazily loaded code in the Local Changes-style Pierre file tree with aggregate and selected-file addition/deletion totals, switch stacked/split layout in place, jump from timeline comments to their file/thread, read GitHub review threads with replies directly beneath their code, reply to them, resolve or reopen them, and add stale-head-guarded comments to selected line ranges. A compact readiness ledger combines review, checks, conflicts, merge state, and provider freshness. Permission-backed drafts expose Ready for review in place of Merge; active PRs merge with merge-commit, squash, or rebase through a GitHub-style split control. Authentication stays in the signed-in gh / az CLI; provider policies remain enforced. Windows notification monitoring reads the native desktop permission instead of WebView2's browser permission shim. Packaged desktop builds recover the user's CLI PATH from the Unix login shell or persisted Windows environment, so package-manager and version-manager installs work without a custom path. Azure inline comments need iteration tracking and submit-review and other lifecycle actions are still in progress.
• Worktrees (⌘5) — an AI-agent dashboard for every worktree with stable repo naming, branch/session labels, dirty count, ±lines, "touched 3m ago" activity, disk size, ahead/behind, and one-click Review pinned where the branch diverged from main. Worktree tabs of one repo group together instead of looking like separate repos. Rows badge merged / unpushed work against the detected base and warn when parallel worktrees touch the same files; Merge & clean up lands a worktree's branch (squash / merge / fast-forward, exact commands previewed) and retires the worktree + branch in one motion, and every removal first archives a full snapshot — uncommitted and untracked files included — restorable later as a new worktree. Select two or more attempts and Compare them side by side — shared files highlighted — then pick the winner and land it. Creating a worktree can start from any branch, remote branch, tag, or commit (fetch-first for remote bases) and copies gitignored setup files listed in .worktreeinclude (.env, local settings) so agents can run out of the box.
• Everyday Git — staging with per-change-block stage / discard / unstage inline in the diff; fetch / pull / push with streaming progress and explicit pull modes (merge, rebase, fast-forward only) plus a per-repo default; normal, annotated-tag, all-tag, and guarded force-with-lease pushes; explicit push of any local branch to a chosen remote destination; upstream set/change/unset; selected-remote-branch fetch/pull; richer ref menus copy names, refs, and SHAs; local branches merged into the primary branch are marked in the sidebar and commit graph and can be cleared in bulk with independent local/remote selection; branches, tags, stashes, remotes, cherry-pick, revert, merge, and a fully keyboard-operable interactive rebase (reorder, reword, squash, fixup, drop) with conflict-pause Continue / Abort.
• Commit graph — SVG lanes with branch/tag chips, inline stash nodes, a resizable commit detail panel, in-graph search by message / author / hash, a vertical activity-timeline rail (commit-density histogram you can scrub to seek by date), and a reflog browser for recovering commits orphaned by a reset or rebase.
• Command palette (⌘K) — fuzzy search across commands, branches, tags, files, commits, and recent repos, with scope filtering and full keyboard + screen-reader operability.
• File view — highlighted source, --follow history, compare any two revisions, blame, and rendered previews for markdown and SVG; the Files tree uses recognizable language and tool logos, and selecting a commit re-roots it while pinning opened content to that revision. Selecting a folder opens its immediate contents with the same file-type icons, file/change counts, and keyboard navigation. Right-click any working-tree file to open that exact path in your configured external editor.
• Comfortable to live in — multiple repositories open at once (as a vertical icon rail or horizontal toolbar tabs, your pick in Appearance) persisted across launches, saveable as named workspaces (the repos behind one product — open a workspace to focus the rail on just those repos, close it to return to your default set; a manage dialog curates each; creating, switching, and managing are all in ⌘K, including importing a VS Code .code-workspace), native macOS menubar, open the repository or a chosen file in your editor, open a terminal, settings (⌘,) for appearance / diff / git / integrations / AI, in-app updates.
• AI commit messages — suggest subject + body from staged changes (or all unstaged changes when nothing is staged) via your ChatGPT subscription (Codex CLI, gpt-5.6-luna) or Claude Code CLI (claude-sonnet-5 by default); Settings → AI for focused provider sign-in, per-provider model selection used by commit and PR generation, and CLI health checks with a remembered connected indicator. Packaged builds resolve these tools and their runtimes through the user's recovered Unix or Windows PATH; custom paths remain available. Generation is cancellable, scans conservative sensitive-file signals before provider launch, reports partial-context coverage, preserves the replaced draft for one-step undo, and can retry explicitly with the other provider without changing your default. Repository-family writing profiles keep terminology and style consistent across worktrees.
• Fast by design — reads go through gix, writes through git2 and your system git. Performance targets live in PRD.md §8 and are measured in docs/perf-baseline.md.

Status

Strand is in alpha and actively closing its 1.0 milestone. It opens and works on large real-world repositories daily, but expect rough edges. The main remaining gaps are hosted-review completion, localization, Windows/Linux release signing and validation, line-level staging, stash-to-branch, pull autostash/prune preferences, and interactive-rebase edit / merge preservation. See the 1.0 parity audit, ROADMAP.md, and TASKS.md.

Install

Download the latest release for macOS (universal), Windows, or Linux (.deb / .rpm / .AppImage) from GitHub Releases.

Building from source

Prerequisites:

• Rust stable (rustup default stable)
• Node ≥ 20 and pnpm ≥ 9
• Platform deps for Tauri 2: see https://v2.tauri.app/start/prerequisites/

pnpm install
pnpm tauri:dev     # full app: Vite + Rust + native shell
pnpm dev           # frontend only, in a regular browser
pnpm tauri:build   # installers in target/release/bundle

The frontend detects when it isn't running inside Tauri and disables IPC calls, so pnpm dev is useful for UI work without a Rust build.

Project layout

strand/
├── crates/
│   ├── strand-core/    # Git engine (gix for reads, git2 for writes)
│   └── strand-tauri/   # Tauri 2 app shell + IPC commands
├── ui/                 # Vite + React + TypeScript frontend
├── website/            # strand.danielss.dev: landing page + user guide (website/docs/, no build step)
├── docs/               # design notes, perf baseline, packaging
├── PRD.md              # product spec
├── ROADMAP.md          # milestones and status
├── TASKS.md            # granular work list
└── AGENTS.md           # working agreement for AI/dev agents

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Before diving in:

• PRD.md explains what Strand is and the bar it has to clear — performance targets in §8 are not aspirational.
• AGENTS.md is the working agreement. It's written for AI agents but applies to humans too: surgical diffs, simplicity first, and every new surface keyboard-operable.
• The visual identity lives in ui/src/styles/ as design tokens — no hardcoded colors.

License

Strand is dual-licensed:

• AGPL-3.0 for the public distribution. Anyone can read, build, modify, and use the source under the standard AGPL terms.
• Commercial license (one-time purchase) for companies that prefer not to take on AGPL obligations or want to support development.

The app is fully functional for everyone — no feature gating, no nag dialogs, no trial period. The commercial license is honor-system: free for individuals, appreciated for company use. See COMMERCIAL.md for details.