lightjj

A fast, keyboard-driven browser UI for Jujutsu (jj). Single static binary — download or go install, open your repo.

Why

Instant. Navigation is tuned end-to-end: commit_id-keyed caching means j/k through history hits no network, diffs syntax-highlight progressively so the UI never blocks, and opportunistic prefetch keeps the next revision warm. No spinners on the hot path.

Works everywhere. Run it locally, port-forward it from a remote dev box, or proxy it over SSH. Same UX. Auto-refresh watches .jj/repo/op_heads for instant reaction to CLI changes — polling fallback in SSH mode with no remote dependencies.

Multi-repo, multi-workspace. Tabs. Open additional repos with +, jj workspaces open one-click via the ◇ selector. Tab state persists across restarts; diff cache is shared across same-repo workspaces.

Complete jj coverage. Revision graph, bookmarks panel with full sync state, op log, evolog, divergence resolution, inline rebase/squash/split with source/target mode cycling. Right-click menus everywhere. Revset filter with ? help popover.

A real merge tool. Conflicted files open in a 3-pane editor — ours ← result → theirs — with per-hunk arrow-click, arbitrary editing in the center, and undo that restores the source tag. Falls back to raw editor for >2-side or git-style conflicts.

Install

Prebuilt binary (no toolchain needed):

# macOS (Apple Silicon — Intel via Rosetta)
curl -L https://github.com/chronologos/lightjj/releases/latest/download/lightjj-macos-arm64 -o ~/.local/bin/lightjj
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/lightjj
xattr -cr ~/.local/bin/lightjj && codesign -s - -f ~/.local/bin/lightjj   # Gatekeeper: ad-hoc sign

# Linux x86_64 (swap for -arm64)
curl -L https://github.com/chronologos/lightjj/releases/latest/download/lightjj-linux-x86_64 -o ~/.local/bin/lightjj
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/lightjj

~/.local/bin must be on $PATH. Checksums in the release assets. Linux and macOS only.

Or go install (builds from source, requires Go ≥ 1.21):

go install github.com/chronologos/lightjj/cmd/lightjj@latest

Run:

cd /path/to/your/jj/repo
lightjj

Updating: re-run either install command — curl hits /releases/latest/, go install ...@latest pulls the newest tag. Check your version with lightjj --version.

Highlights

• Revision graph — SVG DAG, working-copy @ indicator, immutable ◆ markers, bookmark badges with PR status, conflicted-bookmark ?? markers
• Diff viewer — unified/split, Lezer syntax highlighting, word-level diffs, context expansion, conflict A/B labels, open-in-$EDITOR
• 3-pane merge — ours ← result → theirs; arrow to take hunk, type to edit, undo restores source tag
• Divergence resolver — stack-aware ??/N analysis with per-column keep/abandon/squash strategies and bookmark repointing
• Inline rebase — pick source (-r/-s/-b) and target (onto/after/before) modes, cursor to destination, Enter
• Bookmarks panel (2) — sync state at a glance: ahead/behind/diverged/conflict, PR badges, staleness. d/f/t for delete/forget/track, per-remote visibility toggles
• Multi-select — batch abandon, squash, rebase across revisions with Space
• Op log & evolog — full operation history with undo/restore, per-revision evolution with inter-diffs
• Inline annotations — per-line review comments keyed by change_id; auto-re-anchor on rewrite; export markdown/JSON
• Stale-WC detection — concurrent CLI op left the working copy stale? Warning bar with one-click recovery
• Themes — Catppuccin dark/light (t to toggle)

Agent review loop

1. Agent writes code into a jj revision
2. You review in lightjj — right-click any diff line → Annotate → pick severity, leave comment
3. Cmd+K → Export annotations (markdown) → paste into agent prompt
4. Agent iterates on the same change_id (jj's evolog captures every step)
5. lightjj auto-refreshes; annotations re-anchor via inter-diff delta — unchanged lines track, deleted lines surface as "possibly addressed"
6. Repeat until the revision is clean

See docs/ANNOTATIONS.md for re-anchor mechanics and storage model.

Usage

lightjj                            # serve current repo, open browser
lightjj -R /path/to/repo           # explicit repo path
lightjj --remote user@host:/path   # SSH proxy mode
lightjj --no-browser               # don't auto-open browser
lightjj --addr localhost:8080      # custom listen address

Remote repos

Recommended: run lightjj on the remote and port-forward — local-quality latency with full auto-refresh:

ssh -L 3001:localhost:3001 user@host \
  "lightjj -R /path/to/repo --addr localhost:3001 --no-browser"
# open http://localhost:3001 locally

--remote user@host:/path also works but adds ~400ms per command. Enable SSH ControlMaster to reduce this to ~20ms. Auto-refresh polls every --snapshot-interval (default 5s) — the poll snapshots the remote working copy, so editor saves on the remote host appear in the diff without running jj there. No remote dependencies.

In --remote mode, gh pr list is also run over SSH — install and gh auth login on the remote host if you want PR badges on bookmarks.

Roadmap

	Theme
1.0	Ship-ready core	✓
2.0	Code editing & review	Hunk-level accept/reject (jj split --tool protocol), mega-file virtualization, cross-revision search, LSP-in-FileEditor
3.0	Agentic	Annotations as a library, agent-writable API, auto-re-anchor, MCP server mode

Requirements

• jj >= 0.39
• Go >= 1.21 — only if using go install; prebuilt binaries have zero deps
• gh (optional) — for PR badges. Must be installed and authed wherever the repo lives (remote host when using --remote)

Development

# Two terminals:
go run ./cmd/lightjj --addr localhost:3000 --no-browser   # backend
cd frontend && pnpm run dev                                # frontend (Vite HMR)

# Tests
go test ./...              # Go
cd frontend && pnpm test   # Vitest

See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for system design and docs/CONFIG.md for config fields and open-in-editor setup.

Upstream

Core command builder patterns ported from jjui.