Ziggity – A terminal UI for Git, written in Zig
github.com
github.com
If the docs are hard to read, PRs are welcome. But if "a wall of text" is the strongest critique here, the code's probably fine.
> But if "a wall of text" is the strongest critique here
Well, it is a blocker, since you haven't convinced me to try it. The only feature I find useful is the text selection, and to find it I had to dig through the "wall of text".
You have 10s to tell me what my pain point is and how you solve it, before I move on. I understand you're proud of the speed gains. But as a potential (typical) customer, I'm telling you it's not the problem I have.
Anyways, good luck with your project!
And so it's "actually memory safe".
/sarcasm in case not obvious.
This is AI generated TUI slop made with claude.
I've been seeing a sad trend of these things being built with AI with no care and will be just abandoned in less than a month.
Why should I use this when I can use lazygit which is more popular and has been around and battle tested for years?
I can name a few improvements over Lazygit in random orders:
- Text selection with automatic copy, it works super smoothly and it's useful when you need to quickly copy a commit hash, a portion of code, a diff, or a branch name.
- Force-push with lease, it's something that should be always used when force pushing. If you work in a large codebase it should always be your first attempt after a rebase, and that's how Ziggity works. It will ask to fallback to normal force-push if it didn't work, but you'll remain in control.
- Git actions are async without leaving the TUI: this is in my opinion the biggest improvement over Lazygit, and it makes me much more productive, Lazygit was continuously switching to prompt and asking to press to return back to the TUI. There are also good reasons for this but as a general philosophy I wanted something different, and more optimized.
- I've implemented the 50/72 rule (https://dev.to/noelworden/improving-your-commit-message-with...) for the commits and I can finally prepare good commits, where I highlight when a title is too long and there's a shadow for the linewrap. They are both configurable so I'm not forcing this option.
- I have also implemented the correct behavior a couple of other features that are currently broken on Lazygit, the most serious one for example is that switching branch by name is completely broken and you'll end up in commit in a detached state (try yourself if you don't believe me).
So to answer your question: You should not switch to Ziggity if you are fine with Lazygit. But if you are a proficient Git user, handle largit Git projects, and you have used Lazygit for a while and noticed a few things were "suboptimal"; then you should give Ziggity a try.
Can we have an honor code policy of no LLM agents used in development if you want to present on Hacker News.
The way I think of it is if we have a forum for painters and then someone just keeps sharing GenAI paintings that he did not actually paint. It’s ridiculous, I want to look at stuff humans painted, not AI.
Yes software does have use, and LLM companies have managed to make it so that anyone can build useful software for themselves if they want. So what’s left, is software as an art to appreciate, and I can’t appreciate AI generated art or software whether it is “good”, “functional”, “idiomatic”, “elegant” whatever. We still watch humans play chess, not computers play against each other though sometimes they can be interesting.
I’m not a “Luddite”, I’m unhappy with the way American AI companies have gone about this, if they released open weights it would be better.
But AI fundamentally changes the meaning of developing software, the way a compiler doesn’t. There’s no building software once you’re using LLM, just as there’s no playing chess when you have a chess engine to help you. And maybe AI code will not look like slop in the future, doesn’t matter, I still don’t really care if an AI built it.
With Claude, i find myself reaching for Magit even less.
Is that the principled position you want stand on in 2026 and beyond?
So you would use AI including LLM autocomplete at work, but at the same time, you don't want anything to do with it?
You just previously said that:
>> "...If written by agents, I don’t want anything to do with it. I only want human written software, even LLM autocomplete seems a bridge too far."
That means you would still use AI at some capacity which breaks that guarantee.
This also means that you just contradicted yourself, when I explicitly said in any capacity that you would never use AI or agents at all.
Yes, smells like vibe code. Haven't looked inside but can already tell
I would love to use it without gimmicks.
In my daily job a heavily use Git and a few things bothered me, so I decided to create my own project. Go is not a language I wanted to explore, while I had this interest in giving Zig a try, so eventually I picked it and was blown away by how fast it can be. There's a file called ENHANCEMENTS_OVER_LAZYGIT.md (https://github.com/simoarpe/ziggity/blob/main/docs/ENHANCEME...) but I'll soon merge it into the main README. At my daily job, I handle huge git projects, and use Ziggity daily now, and I'm much more productive. I can name a few improvements over Lazygit in random orders:
- Text selection with automatic copy, it works super smoothly and it's useful when you need to quickly copy a commit hash, a portion of code, a diff, or a branch name.
- Force-push with lease, it's something that should be always used when force pushing. If you work in a large codebase it should always be your first attempt after a rebase, and that's how Ziggity works. It will ask to fallback to normal force-push if it didn't work, but you'll remain in control.
- Git actions are async without leaving the TUI: this is in my opinion the biggest improvement over Lazygit, and it makes me much more productive, Lazygit was continuously switching to prompt and asking to press to return back to the TUI. There are also good reasons for this but as a general philosophy I wanted something different, and more optimized.
- I've implemented the 50/72 rule (https://dev.to/noelworden/improving-your-commit-message-with...) for the commits and I can finally prepare good commits, where I highlight when a title is too long and there's a shadow for the linewrap. They are both configurable so I'm not forcing this option.
- I have also implemented the correct behavior a couple of other features that are currently broken on Lazygit, the most serious one for example is that switching branch by name is completely broken and you'll end up in commit in a detached state (try yourself if you don't believe me).
If you decide to give Ziggity a try, I'm happy to receive feedback
fyi, a couple of features that lazygit does not have, or that aren't easily done in lazygit and which pycharm does quite well (I've used _many_ git tools, and IMO pycharm's internal implementation is still the best, but I switched to lazygit because I dropped pycharm for zed).
- diff any branch against any other branch (lazygit relies on certain branches being marked or inferred as main branches against which you can diff)
- see a file's git history (and which branches those commits are on), drill into the commits
- github (or gitlab, codeberg, etc.) support: open commit in github (easiest way to share commit with a co-worker, for example)
zed inserts the filename but doesn't allow you to edit the commit (so it's all or nothing), pycharm allows you to edit the commit prepopulated with the filename if only one file is staged.
another enhancement is that neither pycharm or zed can handle inserting multiple filenames into the commit. so while editing the commit, you could potentially have keys to insert the staged filenames, i.e., by pressing a meta+number key combo where ctrl+1 inserts the first filename in the staged list, ctrl+2 the second, 1-9. just an idea.
I tend to use the tools in GitHub/Bitbucket. But, I can see how this could be a good alternative.
Why another one? Two reasons, honestly. There were a few areas of lazygit I wanted to improve on for my own workflow, and I wanted a real project to build in Zig, which is genuinely powerful and fast, and a joy once it clicks. It compiles to a single small static binary with explicit memory ownership and no libgit2, it just shells out to the `git` you already have. The UI is built on libvaxis. And I let myself add a bit of sugar along the way, because a tool you stare at all day might as well be pleasant.
A few things that are a bit different from lazygit: - A divergence view + status-coloured commit hashes so ahead/behind commits stand out at a glance - Independent drill-downs in the Branches/Commits panels (deliberate, not a port artifact) - Line level staging, interactive rebase, custom patch building, bisect, arbitrary-ref diffing
It's honest about its stage: v0.3.0, macOS/Linux/Windows builds, MIT. The Windows build compiles and libvaxis supports it, but I haven't smoke-tested it on real hardware yet. There's an about screen with a spinning ASCII donut, because why not.
Install: `brew install simoarpe/ziggity/ziggity`, or grab a static binary from the releases page.
Repo: https://github.com/simoarpe/ziggity
I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, especially on the UX and on the Zig code if you're into that. It's a spare time project, so bug reports and "this feels wrong" notes are welcome.
Maybe I've missed some context
> (deliberate, not a port artifact)
Smells like AI
I guess you folks are right and it's probably the llm filter. I looked at the GitHub and thought it had too many screenshots to not have had some human effort, but who knows these days.
Just FYI a large portion is vibecoded for those that don't like that.