Worktree-first workflow

Most Git GUIs treat a branch as the thing you work in: check one out, and your single working directory changes underneath you. SproutGit treats git worktrees as the primary unit instead — every branch you’re actively working on gets its own real directory on disk, all linked to the same underlying repository.

Why this matters

Switching branches the traditional way means stashing or committing whatever you were mid-way through, then unstashing it later and hoping nothing collides. With a worktree per branch, there’s nothing to stash — each piece of work just keeps its own files, its own build output, its own running dev server, until you’re ready to come back to it.

This matters even more once AI coding agents are in the loop. Point an agent at a worktree and it can read, edit, run, and commit inside that directory without ever touching what you (or another agent) are doing in a different worktree of the same repo. Traditional single-checkout branch workflows break down here, because agents end up fighting over the same working directory.

What a worktree gets you in SproutGit

Every worktree in the sidebar has its own:

• Commit graph — lane-based history with worktree markers, so you can see where each worktree’s branch sits relative to the others.
• Changes / diff view — staged and unstaged files, independent of what’s staged in any other worktree.
• Integrated terminal sessions — a worktree’s terminals are scoped to that worktree’s directory.
• Coding agent launches — an agent you configure once can be launched into any worktree, tagged with a live-session badge while it runs.
• Hooks — lifecycle scripts that run when this worktree is created, switched to, switched away from, or removed. See Hooks & the trust model.

Managed vs. externally-managed worktrees

Worktrees SproutGit itself created live under .sproutgit/worktrees/ (see Workspace layout on disk) and are fully managed — SproutGit owns their lifecycle. But if something else adds a worktree to the same repository — for example, an AI agent running its own git worktree add outside the app, or the app’s own MCP server tools — SproutGit adopts it automatically on the next refresh: it shows up in the sidebar with a distinct icon, and works the same as a managed worktree for terminals, diffs, hooks, and agent launches. Removing an adopted worktree from SproutGit never deletes its branch.