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Is there a better way to deal with git staging. Basically I want to encapsulate this idea.
Promotion of feature changes: each interaction with an agent may chagne something, so I want something like, auto-tiers
Accepted code - code I hav reviewed that I have read every line and am happy with
Partial code - code that I have some confidence yet but not willing to fully accept
Staged changes - some mess of code that I have not even read yet, but Like, it sorta works? Compiles, etc
Unstaged chagnes - the last run of an agents output, I might toss it, might staged it, etd
bbb
Basically, staged/unstaged is too coarse. I want to control exactly like what tier to put it under.
Thought for a few seconds
Yes. Treat this as a promotion pipeline, not just Git’s built-in staged/unstaged split.
Git only gives you:
working tree
index
commit history
That is too low-resolution for the policy you want. The fix is to add your own semantic layers on top.
aaa
The model
What you want is roughly:
Untrusted
Latest agent output. May compile, may not. Disposable.
Candidate
Seems directionally right. Maybe tested or compiles. Not fully reviewed.
Reviewed
You have read it carefully and mostly accept it.
Accepted
Fully promoted. This is the version you are willing to preserve as “good”.
That is a real workflow. Git can support it, but not with git add alone.
Best practical way
Use commits as promotion checkpoints, not the staging area.
Think of:
working tree = scratch / untrusted
index = temporary selection tool only
commits = your actual tiers
For example:
WIP(agent): latest output, unreviewed
candidate: compiles, basic smoke passed
reviewed: inspected, needs final polish
accepted: feature is blessed
Now your tiers are not hidden in the index. They are durable, searchable, diffable, and movable.
This is much better than trying to make the Git index carry all the meaning.
Why staging alone breaks down
Because git add is only really answering:
“Should this exact content be included in the next commit?”
It is not good at expressing:
I have not read this
I skimmed this
I trust this but only provisionally
this is accepted but adjacent files are not
this was agent-made and needs human promotion
Those are workflow states, not file-content states.
A better structure
Option A: Commit-based promotion on one branch
This is the simplest good system.
Use a branch per feature, and commits represent promotion:
agent/wip: raw agent pass
agent/wip: follow-up pass
candidate: compiles
candidate: tests green
reviewed: human reviewed core logic
accepted: finalize feature
Then you can diff between tiers:
accepted vs reviewed
reviewed vs candidate
candidate vs latest agent mess
This gives you history and clean rollback.
Option B: Patch queue / stack per promotion level
Even better if you want explicit layering.
For a feature branch:
base branch = known-good
commit stack above it:
raw agent changes
selected candidate changes
reviewed promotions
accepted final layer
This works especially well with stacked commits / Sapling / Graphite-like mental model.
Instead of “what is staged?”, you ask:
which commits have been promoted to which tier?
That is much closer to what you want.
Option C: Separate branches for tiers
Possible, but usually heavier:
feature/foo-untrusted
feature/foo-candidate
feature/foo-reviewed
feature/foo-accepted
This is explicit, but annoying fast. Good for large risky work, bad as a daily default.
My recommendation
Use this:
Yessir
working tree = raw current agent run
small WIP commits = preserved checkpoints
commit message prefixes = promotion state
interactive staging only to carve good hunks out of the mess
worktrees when you want to compare or stabilize accepted code separately
So your real flow becomes:
Agent writes into working tree
You either discard or snapshot it as agent/wip
Promote selected hunks into candidate commit
After reading deeply, amend/promote into reviewed
Squash/finalize into accepted
Concrete mapping
Your categories map cleanly to this:
Unstaged changes
Rename mentally to:
scratch / incoming agent output
This is volatile. No trust implied.
Staged changes
Stop treating this as a trust tier.
Treat it as:
selection buffer for the next promotion
The index is just a temporary holding area.
Partial code
Represent this as a real commit:
candidate: ...
That means:
maybe compiles
maybe passes smoke tests
not fully audited
Accepted code
Represent this as:
accepted: ...
That means:
you read every line you care about
semantics make sense
tests or invariants are good enough
you would be okay keeping this
The key insight
You do not want more staging states inside Git.
You want a promotion protocol layered on top of Git.
Git’s primitives are:
working tree
index
commit
branch
Your workflow primitives should be:
untrusted
candidate
reviewed
accepted
Map your workflow onto commits and branches, not onto index state alone.
The minimal version
A very workable lightweight system:
git status dirty working tree = untrusted
git commit -m "wip(agent): raw output" = preserved but untrusted
git commit -m "candidate: compiles" = partial confidence
git commit -m "reviewed: audited core path" = human-reviewed
git commit -m "accepted: finalize feature" = blessed
That alone gets you 80% there.
The more advanced version
Use directories/metadata/automation to enforce promotion.
For example, a small script could:
snapshot current diff as agent/wip
run checks
tag commit as candidate
open review diff against last accepted point
mark accepted after explicit human confirmation
You could even keep Git notes or commit trailers like:
Promotion: candidate
Reviewed-By-Human: no
Compiles: yes
Tests: smoke
Agent-Generated: yes
Then promotion becomes queryable.
Strong opinion
Do not overload git add with semantic trust.
The staging area is too ephemeral and too binary.
Use:
index for hunk selection
commits for promotion state
branch/worktree boundaries for isolation
That is the durable solution.
A clean mental model
Think of it like this:
working tree = laboratory bench
index = tray where you assemble the next sample
WIP commit = bagged specimen
candidate/reviewed/accepted commits = quality levels in inventory
You are trying to run a quality system. The index is not a quality system.
If you want this to feel really good
The nicest UX would be a tiny wrapper, something like:
promote scratch -> wip
promote wip -> candidate
promote candidate -> reviewed
promote reviewed -> accepted
Under the hood it could just make commits with metadata and maybe tags or branches.
That would match your actual intent much better than raw Git commands.
Bottom line
Yes, there is a better way:
Do not treat staged/unstaged as your trust model. Treat them as mechanics. Build your trust model out of promotion commits.
A good default stack is:
working tree = untrusted agent output
WIP commit = preserved snapshot
candidate commit = seems okay
reviewed commit = human inspected
accepted commit = blessed
If you want, I can design a concrete CLI workflow for this, with exact commands or a small wrapper script.
im more looking for something that might even like, replace gitworkflow.
I see some tools now have like "rounds" or something, where like each change is mini-staged, etc, and you can kinda undo / revert to any history / etc
I’m checking current tools that treat changes as patch stacks or “rounds” rather than plain staged/unstaged, and I’ll map them against the workflow you described.
There are a few real contenders here. Git can be bent into this shape, but some newer tools are closer to “every change is its own promotable unit.”
Thought for 16s
Yes. What you are describing is much closer to change-based or stack-based version control than classic Git staging.
The two strongest fits are:
1. Jujutsu (jj) — probably the closest fit
jj treats work as changes that are routinely rewritten, split, moved, and promoted, instead of making you think in terms of one fragile staging area. It has a stable change ID distinct from the commit ID, so a change can keep its identity even as you rewrite it. It also has an operation log, which makes “undo/revert to earlier local state” much more first-class than plain Git reflog ergonomics.
Why this matches your model:
each agent run can live as its own change
you can keep mutating that change without losing its identity
you can split, squash, rebase, or reorder changes later
“latest mess / partial / accepted” can be modeled as separate mutable changes, not just staged vs unstaged
The important mental shift is:
Git: “What is in the index right now?”
jj: “What are my current changes, and how do I want to rewrite or promote them?”
For agent-heavy workflows, that is usually the better primitive.
2. Sapling (sl) — best if you want stacked promotion over Git-like repos
Sapling is more explicitly about stacks of commits. Its docs describe stacked work and the absorb command, which can automatically amend a change into the lower commit that originally introduced the edited lines when that is unambiguous. Sapling also records mutation history for rewritten commits, and it has a built-in undo for the last local command.
Why this matches your model:
you can treat each “round” as another commit in a stack
later, you can absorb or fold pieces downward
you get a clearer “promotion ladder” than Git staging alone
If your intuition is “I want mini-staged rounds that I can promote and collapse,” Sapling is very aligned with that.
What I would not recommend as your default answer
A pure patch-theory system like Pijul is philosophically closer to “changes as first-class objects,” but it still appears more niche and less operationally standard than jj or Sapling for everyday team workflows. Current public material still frames it as an in-development alternative built around patch theory.
So unless you specifically want to explore patch theory as a research direction, I would not start there.
My actual recommendation
For your use case, I would choose like this:
Choose jj if:
you want to replace Git-thinking
you want each agent interaction to become a durable, rewritable change object
you care a lot about easy local history surgery and safe undo
you want “accepted / partial / scratch” to be modeled as revisions, not index state
Choose Sapling if:
you still think in terms of commit stacks
you want a polished stacked-diff workflow
“rounds” feel like “small commits in a smart stack”
you like commands like absorb, fold, undo, smartlog
How I would map your tiers
In either tool, stop thinking about:
unstaged
staged
and instead think:
scratch — latest agent output
candidate — compiles / plausibly useful
reviewed — you read it and mostly trust it
accepted — blessed
In jj, each of those can just be separate changes, or separate rewritten states of a change. In Sapling, they can be separate commits in a stack.
Blunt answer
Yes: if you want to go beyond Git staging entirely, jj is probably the best current answer.
It is the closest thing to:
“every round is a real object”
“I can rewrite/promote it later”
“I can undo local history manipulation safely”
“I do not want my workflow defined by the index”
Sapling is the runner-up if you want a more explicitly stacked-commit model.
If you want, I can sketch a concrete agent-oriented jj workflow where each model run becomes its own promotable change with commands for promote, split, discard, and accept.
ok so im trying to learn JJ - basically, I want to see that my changes are logged, and I can jump around
I am mostly looking to the operatiosn log rn, with jj op, and having a hard tme understanding it
I’m pulling the current jj docs for the operation log and then I’ll translate it into the simpler mental model you actually need for navigating and undoing local state.
Thought for 6s
jj op log is tracking repository state transitions, not “your code changes” directly.
That is the key thing that makes it feel weird at first.
The mental model
There are two histories in jj:
1. Commit/change history
This is what jj log shows.
It answers:
what revisions exist
how they relate
what code changes are in them
2. Operation history
This is what jj op log shows.
It answers:
what commands changed the repo state
when your workspace/view/bookmarks/heads/working-copy moved
what earlier repo state you can jump back to or restore
So:
jj log = history of changes
jj op log = history of edits to the history / workspace state
That distinction is the whole game.
What an operation actually is
The docs say each operation records a snapshot of how the repo looked at the end of that command. That snapshot is called a view. It includes things like:
heads
bookmarks / tags / Git refs
current working-copy commit in each workspace
So when you run something like:
jj new
jj describe
jj squash
jj undo
even some commands that snapshot the working copy
you are creating a new operation. jj op log shows those operations, in order.
Why it feels confusing
Because an operation is not “one logical patch.”
It is more like:
“At 2:14 PM, I ran a command, and here is the repo/workspace state after that command finished.”
That means jj op log is closer to:
local timeline
undo journal
state machine trace
than it is to a normal commit log.
The most useful way to read it
Read jj op log like this:
each row = one repo-state checkpoint
@ = the current operation
@- = the previous operation
@-- = two operations back
x+ / x- navigate parent/child operations
So if you see:
@ abcdef123456 ... squash commits into ...
○ 123456abcdef ... snapshot working copy
○ fedcba654321 ... new empty commit
that means:
current repo state is after the squash
one step before that, jj snapshotted the working copy
before that, you created a new empty commit
This is not saying those are three commits in your branch.
It is saying those are three commands that changed repo state.
The command you probably want immediately
To understand an old operation, use:
jj --at-op <opid> st
jj --at-op <opid> log
The docs explicitly recommend --at-op for seeing what the repo looked like at an earlier operation. That is usually the missing piece.
This is the important pattern:
jj op log tells you which checkpoint
jj --at-op=<that checkpoint> ... lets you inspect the repo as it looked then
So a good workflow is:
jj op log
jj --at-op @- st
jj --at-op @- log
jj --at-op @-- log
That makes the operation log suddenly make sense.
Jumping around: inspect vs actually move state
There are really three modes:
Just inspect old state
jj --at-op <opid> st
jj --at-op <opid> log
jj --at-op <opid> diff
This does not change your current repo state. It just loads the repo as it looked at that operation. Also, when doing this, the working copy is ignored.
Undo the most recent operation
jj undo
This walks backward one operation at a time. The op log is specifically designed for this.
Revert or restore older repo state
jj op revert <opid>
jj op restore <opid>
revert applies the inverse of one earlier operation
restore creates a new operation that restores the repo to the state at that earlier operation, effectively undoing all later operations
The distinction:
revert = “undo just that one operation”
restore = “take me back to how everything looked then”
The cleanest analogy
Think of:
jj log as the story of your code
jj op log as the security camera footage of you editing the story
You use jj log to understand the feature.
You use jj op log to understand:
what you did locally
what command caused the weird state
what checkpoint you want to return to
For your use case specifically
You said you want:
to see that changes are logged
to jump around
to understand “rounds”
Then use this split:
Use jj log for:
“what are my rounds?”
“what changes currently exist?”
“what stack am I building?”
Use jj op log for:
“what commands happened?”
“when did I get into this weird state?”
“what local checkpoint do I want to inspect/undo/restore?”
So if you are expecting jj op log to be your primary “rounds” view, that expectation is a little off.
Your “rounds” are usually better thought of as revisions/changes in jj log.
The operation log is the meta-history around those rounds.
The few commands I would drill first
jj log
jj op log
jj --at-op @- st
jj --at-op @- log
jj undo
jj op restore <opid>
And the key reading trick:
find an interesting operation in jj op log
run jj --at-op <that-op> log
compare with current jj log
That is how you build intuition.
One subtle but important point
The jj docs also note that the operation log is part of how jj supports concurrent, lock-free repo operations. So it is not just a UI convenience; it is a core state-history mechanism.
That is why it is broad and repo-oriented, not narrowly “patch oriented.”
Practical takeaway
If you want a simple rule:
“What code changes exist?” → jj log
“What did I do to the repo?” → jj op log
“What did the repo look like at step N?” → jj --at-op <opid> ...
“Go back” → jj undo or jj op restore <opid>
If you want, next I can give you a tiny fake example repo session showing:
jj new
edit files
jj describe
jj squash
jj op log
jj --at-op ... log
so you can see exactly how the two histories diverge.
i want to revert a delete i made
I’m checking the current jj command for undoing a file deletion, since the exact restore command in jj matters.
Thought for 8s
Use jj restore.
For a file you deleted in your current working copy, the usual command is:
jj restore path/to/file
That restores the file from the parent/base revision into your current working copy revision. jj restore is the command meant for bringing file contents back from another revision, and the docs also describe jj restore --from X for restoring from a specific revision.
If you want to restore it from some specific revision instead of the default source, use:
jj restore --from <revset> path/to/file
Examples:
jj restore src/foo.ts
jj restore --from @- src/foo.ts
jj restore --from main src/foo.ts
jj revsets like @ and @- are standard revision selectors, and many jj commands accept them.
To check what happened before restoring:
jj diff
jj file list
And if what you actually want is to undo the whole last repo operation rather than just one deleted file, use:
jj undo
The operation log / undo flow is the repo-state history, not just file history.
If jj restore path/to/file errors, paste the exact command and output.
no i never commited - so basically, I wrote a file, ran jj (so it was commited, but like, not), then I reverted it by disacarding it. Now I want to pull this data in again. In git this is like a discarded file basscailly, I want to retreive that
This is likely recoverable through the operation log, because jj snapshots working-copy state as part of repo operations. I’m confirming the exact recovery path.
Thought for 5s
Yes — this is usually recoverable.
What happened is not “never committed” in the Git sense. In jj, your working copy is tracked through repo operations, and jj snapshots working-copy state, which is why jj undo can bring back working-copy changes in many cases.
The cleanest recovery path is:
jj op log
Find the operation from before you discarded the file, then inspect that repo state:
jj --at-op <op-id-before-discard> st
jj --at-op <op-id-before-discard> log
--at-op lets you view the repository as it looked at that earlier operation, which is exactly what the operation log is for.
Then restore the repo state you want:
jj op restore <op-id-before-discard>
jj op restore creates a new operation that restores the repository to how it looked at that earlier operation. The docs explicitly recommend using jj op log to find the operation and jj --at-op=<id> log to inspect it before restoring.
The very likely simple case
If the discard was your most recent jj action, just do:
jj undo
jj undo undoes the most recent operation, and jj redo is its counterpart. Because jj snapshots the working copy, undoing a recent operation can restore working-copy changes rather than leaving you with a clean tree the way some other tools would.
Practical sequence
Try this in order:
jj undo
If that was not the last operation, then:
jj op log
jj --at-op @- st
jj --at-op @- log
jj --at-op @-- st
jj --at-op @-- log
Once you find the state that still had the file:
jj op restore <that-op-id>
Important caution
jj op restore restores the repo state at that operation, so if you have newer work you care about, inspect first with --at-op before restoring. The docs specifically frame op restore as restoring the entire repo to an earlier state.
If you want, paste the output of:
jj op log -n 5
and I’ll tell you exactly which operation to restore.
│ Changed working copy default@:
│ + rqzslkwl 833c4ba6 (conflict) (no description set)
│ - qsrwtukp 1e0cea43 (empty) (no description set)
○ 964b3360ba85 dev@mlv-ubuntu-01 default@ 14 minutes ago, lasted 10 milliseconds
│ edit commit 1e0cea43f51f8699846cf61e193f146cf8df2d2d
│ args: jj edit -r qsrwtukp --config-file /home/dev/.cursor/extensions/jjk.jjk-0.10.0-universal/dist/config.toml
so llooiking at this, what do I want to do to go to this version agian
I’m confirming the exact jj operation command here, because the safest move depends on whether you want to inspect that old state or actually restore your repo to it.
Thought for 5s
Not that operation.
That 964b3360ba85 line is an operation, meaning “you ran jj edit -r qsrwtukp then.” It is not itself “the version” you want to edit.
The useful thing in your snippet is this part:
Changed working copy default@:
+ rqzslkwl 833c4ba6 (conflict)
- qsrwtukp 1e0cea43 (empty)
That means the working copy commit changed from qsrwtukp / 1e0cea43 to rqzslkwl / 833c4ba6 during that operation. The actual old revision there is 1e0cea43, not the operation ID.
If you want to go back to editing that old revision again, try:
jj edit 1e0cea43
or
jj edit qsrwtukp
That resumes editing that old change in your working copy. jj edit <commit> is the command for making that revision your current working copy again.
Before doing that, inspect it:
jj show 1e0cea43
If that commit is hidden and you want to see the sequence of old working-copy incarnations, jj evolog is often the better tool than jj op log for this exact case. The FAQ explicitly says evolog shows the history of prior working-copy commits, including hidden ones.
So the practical sequence is:
jj evolog
jj show 1e0cea43
jj edit 1e0cea43
If instead you want to restore the entire repo/workspace state from that operation, then use:
jj op restore 964b3360ba85
But that is much broader. It restores the repo to how it looked at that operation, not just that one deleted file/change.
For your case, the most likely correct move is:
jj edit 1e0cea43
If you paste jj evolog -n 10, I can point to the exact revision to edit.
wait how do I go back
I’m verifying the exact jj command for “go back” versus “restore an old state,” since those are different in jj.
Thought for 7s
If you mean “go back one step,” use:
jj undo
That moves the repo back one operation. You can run it repeatedly to keep stepping backward through the operation log. jj redo moves forward again after that.
So the immediate pair is:
jj undo
jj redo
If you mean “go back to that exact old repo state from jj op log,” use:
jj op restore 964b3360ba85
That restores the repository to how it looked at that operation. It is broader than jj undo.
If you want to inspect before doing that:
jj --at-op 964b3360ba85 log
jj --at-op 964b3360ba85 st
And one important distinction: if what you really want is “resume editing that old change again,” that is usually jj edit <rev> or finding it via jj evolog, not jj op restore. evolog is specifically for the history of a single evolving change.
For your case, the safest first thing to try is:
jj undo
If that does not land where you want, paste jj op log -n 5 and I’ll tell you the exact next command.
ok so basically how do I undo, but lik,e, choose a speicifc op to jump to
I’m checking the exact jj command semantics here, because “undo to a chosen op” in jj is not the same as moving a pointer like git reset --hard.
Thought for 5s
Use jj op restore <op-id>.
That is the command for “take me to the repo state as of this specific operation.” It creates a new operation that restores the repo to how it looked then, effectively undoing all later operations.
For example:
jj op log
jj --at-op 964b3360ba85 log
jj --at-op 964b3360ba85 st
jj op restore 964b3360ba85
The middle two commands are the safe inspection step. The docs explicitly recommend using jj --at-op=<operation ID> log before restoring, so you can confirm that is the state you want.
Important distinction:
jj undo = step back one operation at a time, repeat if needed.
jj op restore <op> = jump back to a specific operation.
jj op revert <op> = invert just that one old operation, not “time travel” back to it.
So for “undo, but choose the exact op,” the answer is:
jj op restore <op-id>
If you only want to inspect that old state without changing anything yet:
jj --at-op <op-id> log
jj --at-op <op-id> st
If you paste the 3–5 surrounding lines from jj op log, I can tell you which exact op to restore.
Ok this is sick -- how can I filter logs of jj to only show things that actually alter files
I’m checking whether jj exposes a built-in way to filter either revision logs or operation logs down to file-changing entries only, since those are different layers.
Thought for 22s
Yes — for revision logs use a revset filter.
The main one is:
jj log -r '~empty()'
empty() matches commits that modify no files, so ~empty() shows only revisions that actually changed files. The revset docs define empty() as “commits modifying no files,” and files(expression) matches commits that modify paths matching a fileset.
Useful variants:
jj log -r 'mutable() & ~empty()'
jj log -r 'mine() & ~empty()'
jj log path/to/file
jj log -r 'files("src/") & ~empty()'
jj log <path> is effectively using the same file-based filtering idea as files(...).
The important caveat:
jj log filters revisions/changes
jj op log is the operation log
For jj op log, there is not really a built-in “only show ops that altered files” view in the same sense, because ops track repo/workspace operations, and jj snapshots the working copy at the beginning of almost every command. So even commands that are not conceptually “real code changes” can still produce op-log noise.
So the practical answer is:
to see only actual code-changing revisions:
jj log -r '~empty()'
to see only changes touching a path:
jj log path/to/file
for op history, there is no equally clean built-in “file-changing ops only” filter; use jj log or jj evolog when your intent is “show me meaningful content changes,” not “show me every operation.”
A very good default alias is:
[aliases]
ll = ["log", "-r", "mutable() & ~empty()"]
Then:
jj ll
shows your local non-empty work.
how can I get cursor to run jj on every save, so every change is versioned
I’m checking whether Cursor has a native “run command on save” hook, versus needing a VS Code-style extension or file watcher workaround.
Thought for 7s
Probably not natively in Cursor itself.
I could not find an official Cursor setting for “run an arbitrary shell command on every save.” Cursor’s docs cover terminal access and Git integration, but not a built-in save hook for custom commands.
The practical way is to use a VS Code-compatible extension in Cursor, since Cursor keeps the VS Code-style extension model. One extension specifically meant for this is Actions On Save, which runs configured shell commands when matching files are saved.
The setup I would use
Install the extension:
tonychen.actions-on-save