Documentation

Use Git at terminal speed.

Gitside is a source-control panel over your installed Git and GitHub CLI. It keeps credentials, editor configuration, signing, hooks, and transport where they already belong.

Installation

Install a native package for your system. Git 2.30 or newer is required at runtime.

$ brew install dev-bhaskar8/tap/gitside

Cargocargo install gitside --locked

Chocolateychoco install gitside

Scoopscoop install gitside

npmnpm install -g gitside

DirectGitHub Releases

Direct installers, Nix, `.deb`, and `.rpm` are also available. Chocolatey’s first version is in automated moderation review; use the direct Windows installer until that review completes. See the complete installation and release guide.

First run

Open the repository in your current directory or pass one or more explicit paths.

$ gitside
$ gitside ~/code/project
$ gitside ~/code/api ~/code/web

Initialize or clone and immediately open a repository with gitside init ./project or gitside clone URL.

Same-repository benchmark

These medians come from five launches of each tool against this 87-commit checkout, in the same 118×42 tmux terminal on macOS arm64. Time is to the first usable screen, memory is process RSS, and each run was quit with q.

Median of five launches · versions current on August 3, 2026
Tool	First UI	Memory	Binary	Stability
gitside 0.1.2	0.75 s	10 MiB	5.2 MB	5/5 clean exits
gitui 0.28.1-nightly	0.16 s	15 MiB	10.0 MB	5/5 clean exits
lazygit 0.63.1	0.27 s	30 MiB	18.6 MB	5/5 clean exits
tig 2.6.1	0.15 s	3.5 MiB	0.7 MB	5/5 clean exits

This is an interactive launch comparison, not a full-history stress test. Gitside loads a bounded history page initially and fetches more commits as you scroll.

Essential controls

j kMove selection

TabNext panel

SpaceStage or unstage

EnterOpen or activate

cCommit message

Ctrl + U / Ctrl + BackspaceClear commit draft

Ctrl + EnterCommit

Ctrl + GGenerate message draft

f l pFetch, pull, push

? / F1Contextual help

q / Ctrl+CQuit

Advanced controls appear in Help when their panel or repository state is active. The complete key reference covers commits, conflicts, stashes, branches, worktrees, and remotes.

Optional commit-message drafts

The AI panel is always part of the normal Tab sequence, alongside Stashes and Worktrees. Press Y to open it directly. Its responsive controls configure and report the selected Local, Agent, or API mode; Configure and Remove Key stay below the details. Generate sits beside Commit, where queued and active generation remain visible.

The wizard configures built-in or other agent commands, API providers, models, keys, OpenAI-compatible endpoints, and instructions without hand-editing TOML. Keys are masked and stored in macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, or Linux Secret Service; non-secret settings save automatically.

Gitside produces only an editable draft. It prefers staged changes and falls back to unstaged and untracked work when the index is empty, without staging anything. It never creates repositories, switches branches, commits, or pushes. MCP is not required because built-in agent adapters use non-interactive, non-mutating modes. See the configuration examples.

GitHub integration

Install GitHub CLI and run gh auth login. Gitside detects installation, authentication, and remotes during refresh. No restart is required after login.

With no remote, press p or focus GitHub and press Enter. Choose the repository name and visibility, then approve the final confirmation. Nothing is published automatically.

Configuration

Configuration is optional. Gitside looks in the platform application-data directory for gitside/config.toml.

refresh_ms = 1500
mouse = true
layout = "auto"
graph_page_size = 200
confirm_destructive = true

Layouts can be auto, compact, or wide. See the configuration reference.

tmux and mouse

Gitside works keyboard-only. To pass mouse events through tmux, add this to ~/.tmux.conf:

set -g mouse on

Ghostty, Windows Terminal, and terminals supporting SGR mouse events can click toolbar controls, panels, files, commits, and dialogs.

Troubleshooting

GitHub says the CLI is unavailable

Verify gh --version and gh auth status in the same terminal environment, then press r or enter the GitHub panel.

Mouse clicks do not work in tmux

Enable tmux mouse mode and ensure Gitside has not been started with mouse support disabled.

Colors are difficult to read

Gitside inherits the terminal background. Check the terminal profile's ANSI blue, yellow, red, and green colors for sufficient contrast.

More cases are covered in the troubleshooting guide.

Support Gitside

Gitside is free and open source. If it saves you time, you can optionally support continued development using this EVM wallet address.

0xC87efC9c71C422779F7dbeF14B2Fc4eef94b84fF

Verify network and asset compatibility before sending. Cryptocurrency transfers are irreversible. Donations do not provide product features, support guarantees, governance rights, or investment value.