The Changes panel in the desktop app reviews the Git changes in the focused pane's checkout, beside your panes. Use it to read what an agent changed, stage or commit it, and send the agent line comments, without leaving the app.
Press Cmd+Alt+G to open it.
It shows changed files as a tree and every diff in one scroll, with changed
words highlighted, syntax colors, folded context, and a side-by-side layout.
You can stage whole files or selected lines, resolve conflicts, mark files
viewed, and commit. It follows focus and runs your own git on folders on
this machine. See the desktop overview for the rest
of the app.
Open it
Toggle Changes opens and closes the panel. Reach it with Cmd+Alt+G (Super instead of Cmd on Linux), the branch button in the titlebar, the sidebar view menu, or the command palette. Drag its left edge to resize it. When the window has room, the panes keep at least 320 points beside the sidebar. In a narrow window the panel stays compact and crowded bottom tabs move to the titlebar.
What it shows
The panel reads the folder the focused terminal last reported and follows
focus and the shell’s cd. Its header names the branch, the repository, and
how many commits are waiting to push or pull.
The file column groups files three ways:
| Group | Holds |
|---|---|
| Conflicts | Unmerged files. |
| Staged | Changes in the index, ready to commit. |
| Changes | Edits to tracked files, then new untracked files. |
Files sit under their folders, and a chain of single-folder parents shows as
one row, such as clients/desktop/native. Click a folder to fold it. The list
button in the header switches to a flat list. Each file shows its added and
removed line counts. A group lists at most 500 files and counts the rest.
The diff column shows one comparison at a time. Changes compares the
working tree with the index, and new files appear whole. Staged compares
the index with HEAD. Clicking a file switches to its comparison and scrolls
to it. Within a diff:
- Words that changed inside a line are emphasized over the line’s tint.
- Syntax is colored for common languages, such as Rust, TypeScript, Python, Go, Swift and Markdown.
- Unchanged runs fold to three lines of context, with controls to expand them.
- The layout button cycles Automatic, Side by Side and Unified. Automatic splits once the diff is about 820 points wide.
- The arrows jump to the previous or next change.
Review
Each file header has a Viewed toggle. A viewed file folds, and the toolbar counts how many of the comparison’s files are viewed. The mark clears when the file changes again, so a file the agent edits after you looked shows up again.
Hover a line, or select lines from the gutter, and click the add button to write a note for the agent. Enter saves the note and Shift+Enter adds a line. Notes stay with their lines. Send Notes pastes them, numbered and labelled with file and line, into the terminal the panel follows. Nothing is submitted: press Enter in that terminal to send the review.
Stage and commit
- Files: a file header’s Stage or Unstage button, or the button that shows when you hover a file row, moves the whole file. Stage All and Unstage All act on a whole group.
- Lines: select lines in the diff and click Stage Lines to stage only those added or removed lines. In the Staged comparison, Unstage Lines takes them back out of the index.
- Conflicts: a conflicted file shows its conflict regions with a choice of ours, theirs or both for each. Once every region has a choice, Mark Resolved writes the result and stages it.
- Commit: the message field commits the index. Enter commits and Shift+Enter adds a line. Commit is enabled only with something staged, no conflicts, and a message.
The panel runs your own git, so hooks, config, signing, credential helpers,
and ignore rules apply as they do in the terminal. A refused commit shows
git’s own message and keeps your text.
Limits
- Remote windows and terminals on another machine say why nothing is shown: their folders are not on this machine.
- Reads never take the index lock, so the panel checking every few seconds
doesn’t get in the way of an agent’s
git. When the agent changes the shown comparison, the diff reloads and returns to the file you last opened. - Very large comparisons are fetched with less surrounding context. New files over 1 MiB, binary files, and more than 200 new files are not previewed.
- Diffs that aren’t UTF-8 must be reviewed and staged in the terminal. The panel never stages text it changed for display.
- Line staging moves content only, not executable-bit changes. Stage renames and copies as whole files, or in the terminal.
- Notes and viewed marks last until the window closes or follows another checkout.
- The panel does not discard changes, push, pull, or switch branches.