drift

A terminal UI for reviewing your working changes like a pull request: everything that differs from the base branch — committed or not — in one view.

The comparison point is git merge-base <base> HEAD, diffed against the working tree, so committed work, uncommitted edits, and untracked files all show up together. The base branch is auto-detected (origin/HEAD, then main, then master), and can be switched from inside the app.

The same UI also opens real pull requests: browse the repo's open GitHub PRs or GitLab MRs, read the discussion, reply to review threads, comment on lines, resolve, delete — without leaving the terminal. See Pull requests.

Install

macOS / Linux

curl -fsSL https://tothalex.github.io/drift/install.sh | sh

Prebuilt binaries (x86_64/aarch64) land in ~/.local/bin (override with DRIFT_INSTALL_DIR).

Windows (experimental)

Grab drift-windows-x86_64.zip from the latest release and unzip it. Then, from PowerShell in the folder containing drift.exe, move it somewhere permanent and add that folder to your user PATH:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\drift" | Out-Null
Move-Item drift.exe "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\drift\"
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path",
  [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "User") + ";$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\drift", "User")

Open a new terminal and drift is available. (Alternatively: Start menu → "Edit environment variables for your account" → edit Path → add the folder there.) Windows Terminal is recommended. Windows support is new — if something misbehaves, please open an issue.

Or build from source on any platform: see Build.

Usage

drift              # review the current repo
drift --base dev   # compare against a different base
drift ~/some/repo  # review another repository
drift --pr 123     # open pull request #123 right away

Features

The primary view is your own working changes — everything since the base branch, kept live as you edit:

• Changes are shown inside their enclosing code block (function, class, if, …) resolved with tree-sitter, not as bare hunks; the scope can be widened and narrowed. Rust, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript/TSX, and Go; other files fall back to plain hunks.
• Syntax highlighting, with changed lines marked by gutter accents and word-level emphasis on the exact edit.
• Comment-only lines render as prose with TODO/FIXME tags accented; unchanged comment blocks can be folded to a one-line summary.
• Two-pane focus: h aims the cursor keys at the file tree, l at the code view (the lit-up header shows which; clicking a pane focuses it too). H/L step between files, skipping ones checked off.
• Each pane keeps its own / search with match highlighting; n/N cycle the focused pane's matches — and in an unsearched code view they hop between the changes themselves, so large files navigate by edit, not by scrolling.
• File tree with review progress: check files off as you go, navigation skips what's done.
• Vim-style keys (counts, g/G, visual mode, yank) and full mouse support (wheel per pane, click, drag-to-copy, pane resize).
• Live reload: the working tree is watched, so edits made outside the app — your editor, an AI agent, a git commit — appear as they land, without losing your cursor or scroll position. Gitignored paths (build artifacts) never trigger a refresh.
• Press e to open the file in your editor at the cursor's line (neovim by default, configurable — see below); edits show up in the diff the moment you save.
• Review scopes: press b (or click the branch name in the status bar) to switch the base branch, then narrow the review to one commit or to untracked files only — or keep everything at once.
• All views are precomputed on background threads — navigation stays instant regardless of changeset size.

Press ? inside the app for all keybindings.

Pull requests

drift doubles as a PR review tool. Press p (or run drift --pr 123) to list the repository's open pull requests (GitHub) or merge requests (GitLab) and open one — the same file tree, block-scoped diffs, review progress, and search as the primary view, with the whole review conversation in place:

• Inline review threads sit under the exact diff lines they were written on, with their resolved/unresolved state; t folds a thread down to its head line. Threads that no longer match the current diff stay reachable instead of disappearing.
• A virtual # conversation entry pinned at the top of the tree holds the PR description, the PR-level discussion, and those outdated threads.
• Comment anywhere: a on a diff line starts a new inline thread, a on a thread's [a] reply row answers that thread, and A writes a PR-level comment from wherever you are.
• Comments are composed in a small in-app box — enter posts, shift+enter (or alt+enter in terminals without the kitty keyboard protocol) adds a line, esc cancels; the box's footer shows the keys that work in your terminal. While a comment posts, a spinner marks the exact row it will land on.
• On comment rows r toggles the thread resolved/unresolved and d (pressed twice, with the author named in the confirmation) deletes your comment — the [r]/[d] hints under each thread advertise them; elsewhere both keys keep their global meanings.
• r refetches the open pull request without losing your place; p (or clicking the #N status segment) returns to the list, where the first row leads back to your local changes.
• When the PR's commits exist locally (after any git fetch), diffs get full syntax highlighting and block scoping; otherwise drift falls back to the plain hunk view — no fetch is ever run for you.

drift talks to the forge through the official CLIs — gh for GitHub, glab for GitLab — so install the one for your forge and run its auth login once. That's also what makes GitHub Enterprise and self-managed GitLab work: authenticate the CLI against your host (gh auth login --hostname git.corp.example) and drift picks the forge from the repo's origin remote. If your hostname names neither "github" nor "gitlab", set it explicitly in the config:

[forge]
kind = "gitlab"          # or "github"
# gh = "/path/to/gh"     # binary overrides, if not on PATH
# glab = "/path/to/glab"

Configuration

Every keybinding and color is configurable via ~/.config/drift/config.toml (respects $XDG_CONFIG_HOME). Generate the documented default file with:

drift --init-config

Keys take single characters, named keys (enter, space, tab, arrows, pageup/pagedown, home/end), optionally prefixed ctrl-; listing an action replaces all of its default keys. Colors take ANSI names, 256-color indexes, or hex values — including the full syntax palette, and a [theme.<lang>] section (rust, python, javascript, typescript, tsx, go) overrides any syntax color for that language only. A top-level base = "…" sets the default comparison branch.

Colors layer in three steps: a base colorscheme, then [theme] / [theme.<lang>] overrides on top. The built-in colorscheme is onedark; a custom one is a file next to the config:

# ~/.config/drift/config.toml
colorscheme = "mytheme"

# ~/.config/drift/themes/mytheme.toml — same keys as [theme]; missing
# keys keep the built-in defaults
keyword = "#fb4934"
string = "#b8bb26"

[rust]
bracket = "#fe8019"

The editor is a top-level editor = "…" command; {file} and {line} are substituted, and the file path is appended when {file} is absent:

editor = "nvim +{line}"           # the default
# editor = "code -g {file}:{line}"
# editor = "subl {file}:{line}"

Build

cargo build --release   # binary at target/release/drift
cargo test

Git repositories are read natively (via gitoxide) — the git binary is not required.