rimba

A CLI tool to create, sync, merge, and organize git worktrees — so you can work on multiple branches in parallel without the hassle.

rimba automates the full git worktree lifecycle — branch naming, file copying, dependency sharing, post-create hooks, and cleanup — so you can develop across multiple branches simultaneously with zero friction.

• Features
• Installation
  • Verifying releases
• Quick Start
• Commands
• Configuration
• Trust model
• Troubleshooting
• Contributing
• License

🌿 Core Workflow

• Automatic branch naming — fixed prefix types (feature/, bugfix/, hotfix/, docs/, test/, chore/) selected per task via flags
• File & directory copying — auto-copies .env, .env.local, .envrc, .tool-versions and other files or directories (e.g. .vscode/) into new worktrees
• Duplicate worktrees — copy an existing worktree with auto-suffixed or custom name
• Local merge — merge worktree branches into main or other worktrees with auto-cleanup
• Sync worktrees — rebase or merge onto the latest main branch, with bulk sync support
• Monorepo support — service-scoped worktrees with auto-detected 3-segment branch naming (service/prefix/task)

🔧 Automation

• Shared dependencies — auto-detect lockfiles and clone dependency directories using copy-on-write
• Post-create hooks — run shell commands after worktree creation (e.g. ./gradlew build)
• Auto-cleanup hook — post-merge Git hook that cleans merged worktrees after git pull
• Stale cleanup — prune stale references or auto-detect and remove merged worktrees

🖥️ Developer Experience

• Status dashboard — colored tabular view with dirty state, ahead/behind counts, and filtering
• Pre-execution hints — shows available flags before long-running commands, auto-filtered and suppressible
• Worktree navigation — open worktrees or run commands inside them via open
• Shell completions — bash, zsh, fish, and PowerShell
• Cross-platform — Linux, macOS, and Windows (amd64/arm64)

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lugassawan/rimba/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

go install github.com/lugassawan/rimba@latest

git clone https://github.com/lugassawan/rimba.git
cd rimba
make build
# Binary is at ./bin/rimba

Each release publishes a checksums.txt signed with cosign keyless signing (Sigstore OIDC via GitHub Actions). To verify a downloaded checksum file:

cosign verify-blob \
  --certificate checksums.txt.pem \
  --signature checksums.txt.sig \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github.com/lugassawan/rimba/.github/workflows/release.yml@refs/tags/v.*' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  checksums.txt

Each release archive also ships a companion *.sbom.json (SPDX format) on the GitHub Release page.

# Initialize rimba in your repo
rimba init

# Create a worktree for a task
rimba add my-feature

# List all worktrees with status (colored output)
rimba list

# Remove a worktree and its branch when done
rimba remove my-feature

See docs/commands.md for the full reference with all flags, examples, and notes.

rimba init creates a .rimba/ directory with team-shared and personal config files:

copy_files = ['.env', '.env.local', '.envrc', '.tool-versions', '.vscode']
post_create = ['./gradlew build']

[open]
ide = 'code .'
agent = 'claude'

See docs/configuration.md for the full field reference, dependency management, and environment variables.

Running rimba init --agents or rimba init -g additionally creates or patches MCP server config files in client tools (.mcp.json, .cursor/mcp.json, ~/.claude/settings.json, and others). See docs/configuration.md#mcp-server-registration for the full list of patched files and entry format.

.rimba/settings.toml is committed and team-shared. The following fields execute shell commands verbatim via sh -c:

• post_create — runs after a worktree is created (e.g. rimba add, rimba duplicate, rimba restore)
• post_rename — runs after a worktree is renamed (rimba rename)
• deps.modules[].install — runs when installing dependencies into a worktree

rimba will not execute committed shell commands until you have explicitly approved them. On the first run in a new clone (or whenever the command set changes), rimba prints the commands and prompts for consent:

This repo's .rimba/settings.toml will run shell commands that have not been approved:
  pnpm install
  ./scripts/setup.sh

Run these commands? [y/N]

Approval is stored locally in .rimba/trust.local.toml (covered by the .rimba/*.local.toml gitignore glob — each user consents independently). The approval is keyed by a hash of the command set; changing any command re-arms the gate.

Pre-approve without prompting (e.g. for rimba trust after reviewing settings, or in CI):

rimba trust           # review and approve interactively
rimba trust --yes     # approve without prompt (non-interactive)
rimba trust --show    # inspect commands and current approval status

CI / non-interactive environments: pass --yes or set RIMBA_TRUST_YES=1:

RIMBA_TRUST_YES=1 rimba add my-task
rimba add my-task --yes

As a defense-in-depth measure, the copy_files entries and deps.modules[].lockfile paths are validated to stay within the worktree directory — paths that escape via .. are rejected with an error. Note that worktree_dir is intentionally not subject to this constraint, because its default value (../<repo>-worktrees) is itself a ../-relative path.

Pass --debug to any command (or set RIMBA_DEBUG=1) to log git commands and their timings to stderr:

rimba list --debug

MIT