Forest

A happy, native Git client for macOS, built for worktrees and Claude Code agents.

Forest is a SwiftUI Git client that treats worktrees as first-class and understands the Claude Code agents running in them. It's fast on huge diffs, it explains what changed in an Xcode project, and almost everything it does can be undone.

Features

Worktrees & agents

• Worktrees dashboard: main, Claude agents and native worktrees, each with dirty state, ahead/behind, last commit, commits not yet on main, and its pull request with CI status
• Agent cards read Claude Code's transcripts to show the session title, the original task, a live "working now" pulse, and any PR it opened
• New Claude Agent (⌥⌘N): describe a task and Forest creates .claude/worktrees/<name> on worktree-<name>, then launches Claude Code in your terminal with that task
• Review an agent's work: every commit and file it changed against main (uncommitted work included), a one-click Claude review, and a box to send feedback straight back into the agent's session
• Merge into main, push & open a PR, continue the session, lock, or remove the worktree and branch in one step

Claude helpers (use your Claude Code login, run with tools disabled)

• ✨ Write the commit message from the staged changes, following your repo's conventions (⌥⌘M)
• Explain a commit: what it does and what to watch out for, right in History
• Resolve conflicts with Claude: hands the conflicted files to Claude Code; you review before continuing

Diffs that stay fast

• A custom renderer draws only what's on screen: 100 000-line files scroll smoothly
• Unified or side-by-side, word-level highlights, syntax colours, wrap, whole-file view, hide whitespace
• Overview ruler and next/previous change (⌥⌘↓ / ⌥⌘↑)
• Xcode projects in plain words: project.pbxproj changes are summarised as files added and removed, target membership, packages and build settings (old → new)
• Lockfiles (Package.resolved, package-lock.json, yarn.lock, …) collapse by default
• Images compare side by side or with a swipe slider
• Stage, unstage or discard hunks or individual lines: click, drag or ⇧-click lines, then use the hunk buttons or right-click

Everything Git

• Commit graph with colored lanes, ref badges, search, keyboard navigation, and "show only this branch"
• Commit, amend, and commit & push, with a little celebration
• Undo (⌥⌘Z, or the toast's Undo button) for commits, discards, checkouts, branch deletes, merges, rebases, cherry-picks, reverts, pulls, resets and stashes
• Drag a branch onto the current one to merge it, or the current branch onto another to rebase
• Branches, remotes, tags and stashes; merge, rebase, cherry-pick, revert and reset
• Conflict banner with ours/theirs/mark resolved, plus continue/abort
• Fetch, pull (ff-only, merge or rebase), push with automatic upstream or force-with-lease
• ⌘K command palette, live refresh through FSEvents, clone/init/open, drag-and-drop folders
• Themes for diffs: Solarized Dark (default), Solarized Light, Dracula, One Dark, Monokai, Nord, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, GitHub Dark and Light
• Updates itself from GitHub Releases, installing only builds signed by the same developer and notarized by Apple

Xcode project, side by side	Reviewing an agent

History	Image diff

Build & run

Requires macOS 14+ and Xcode 16+ (Swift 6 toolchain).

scripts/build-app.sh          # builds build/Forest.app (release)
open build/Forest.app
open build/Forest.app --args ~/code/my-repo   # open a repo directly

To ship a signed, notarized build (build/Forest-<version>.dmg and .zip), you need a Developer ID Application certificate and a notary keychain profile (xcrun notarytool store-credentials notary …). Then run:

scripts/release.sh

The version comes from the latest v* tag (default 0.2.0); the build number is the commit count.

For development, swift run Forest, or open Package.swift in Xcode. Run tests with swift test.

Optional: install the GitHub CLI (gh auth login) to see pull requests and CI status.

Architecture

Sources/ForestCore   Git engine: runs the system git binary, parses porcelain output, lays out the commit
                     graph and diffs, builds partial-staging patches, summarises Xcode projects,
                     reads Claude sessions, runs headless Claude and gh
Sources/Forest       SwiftUI app: RepoStore (per-window state & actions), views, and the AppKit diff canvas
Tests/               Swift Testing suites, many against real temporary repositories

Forest shells out to your own git, so hooks, credential helpers, LFS, signing and config work exactly as they do on the command line.

Keyboard shortcuts

⌘1 / ⌘2 / ⌘3	Changes / History / Worktrees
⌘K	Command palette
⌘↩	Commit
⌥⌘M	Write commit message with Claude
⌥⌘Z	Undo last action
⌥⌘↓ / ⌥⌘↑	Next / previous change in a diff
⇧⌘F / ⇧⌘P / ⇧⌘U	Fetch / Pull / Push
⇧⌘B	New branch
⇧⌘T	New worktree
⌥⌘N	New Claude agent
⌥⌘L	Launch Claude Code here
⌥⌘S	Stash
Space / double-click	Stage or unstage selected files
Esc	Clear the line selection in a diff

See docs/ROADMAP.md for what's next.