Ziggity – A terminal UI for Git, written in Zig

by TheSorcerer • 2 days ago

81 71 2 days ago

Hi HN, I've been building Ziggity, a keyboard-driven terminal UI for Git. It's inspired by lazygit (which I used daily), but written from scratch in Zig rather than being a port.

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.

jddj2• 2 days ago

I can't really tell why this comment got flagged, so I've vouched it.

Maybe I've missed some context

projektfu• 2 days ago

It's probably because of HN's anti-LLM filter. I don't know if submitters use LLMs to touch up their descriptions or if these descriptions often use LLM-like phrasing.

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

Thank you! I've used AI to fix my English as it's not my primary language and probably got flagged.

greggroth• 2 days ago

Neat project, but the README would benefit from a human author. I can tell what you prompted by the way the README is worded. It should tell me more about what this project solves. I don't care that it uses idiomatic zig. Why should I use this instead of lazygit?

tosti• 2 days ago

If this is idiomatic zig, functions must be expensive because it fails horribly in the DRY departement. Also, papering over exceptions everywhere by... catching and not handling exceptions. What could possibly go wrong?

blueaquilae2• 2 days ago

You have no idea don't you? it's like telling Ghostty failed because you don't understand how try/catch was a mistake in software conception.

arjie• 2 days ago

In general, for most projects like this the README is the product. You usually have better results using it and the code as a starter prompt for your own software if you feel the need. I wouldn’t use this kind of thing directly from upstream.

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

This is probably the most valuable feedback received so far. I'll make sure to draft a new README file following what you have suggested. The current version was partially written with the help of AI as English is not my primary language but I recognize that I should put more emphasis on what this project solves. I've put a few points in a separate file called ENHANCEMENTS_OVER_LAZYGIT.md but I will probably review and merge it into the primary README file. Thanks!

oldmoozy• 13 hours ago

Yes, from the README, it's not clear why the author would maintain a project with main features being saving 10Mb of ram&storage and 10ms startup time... followed by a wall of hard-to-read AI-generated text.

arikrahman• 2 days ago

Maybe can emphasize yourself and call it LazyZig or something with the lazy moniker.

v3ss0n2• 2 days ago

Lazy in a way that it was been vibe coded

dd_xplore• 2 days ago

I wonder when is the 900,000 lines single commit coming for Rust rewrite

pelasaco• 2 days ago

dont worry, soon or late it will show up in HN..

IshKebab• 2 days ago

It's written by Claude already so it probably wouldn't make any difference I guess?

v3ss0n2• 2 days ago

You beat me to it

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 days ago

I'm working on porting the Rust compiler to VB.NET, so I can run it inside Excel spreadsheets.

And so it's "actually memory safe".

/sarcasm in case not obvious.

ubercore• 2 days ago

I really want someone to do this now.

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

Never! (Pinky finger)

sashank_15093• 2 days ago

I’m such a CLANKER hater now, I want to know if this was written by agents or not. 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.

ursuscamp• 2 days ago

You're in for a great deal of pain in the coming years.

rvz2• 2 days ago

So you guarantee that you yourself will never use AI or agents in any capacity?

Is that the principled position you want stand on in 2026 and beyond?

sashank_15093• 2 days ago

Yes I won’t use LLM autocomplete or agents for any personal projects. At work, I’ll do whatever’s needed.

whimsicalism2• 2 days ago

some of you all need to take a break from politics, it is clearly not doing you good and easy to get swept up into group mania imo.

hoppp3• 2 days ago

Understandable

Yes, smells like vibe code. Haven't looked inside but can already tell

jllyhill2• 2 days ago

You can just scroll down to the contributors section to see that it was indeed written by Claude

colesantiago• 2 days ago

Honest feedback:

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?

ICHx• 2 days ago

Exactly, waste of electricity

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

So many wrong assumptions in a single message. Lazygit is a fantastic project, I've been using it for several years, but there were so many things I wanted to improve/change, that eventually 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).

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.

kvisner• 2 days ago

Very cool, but if I'm prompting / looping an AI agent as my main development process, what is the use case here? I feel the biggest help would be to make Reviewing PRs from the terminal easier, I care less about commit logs and status.

googletron• 2 days ago

you can see the diff before you merge it. my main use case for lg is looking at diff and staging logical parts then committing with another tool or manually.

lnenad2• 2 days ago

I actually made something that has that exact purpose, making reviewing easier. https://github.com/lnenad/difiko

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

Neat!

JacobAsmuth• 2 days ago

This is huge. I've always wanted to use Git in the terminal but never been happy with the underlying language that other TUIs were written in. Now that I know that I'm using developer-managed memory I can be much more comfortable and confident changing between branches, pushing, and pulling, and even merging code. Thanks Simone!

whimsicalism2• 2 days ago

you dropped your /s

sigmonsays• 2 days ago

prolly authored it in a tui and it crashed, since it wasn't written in rust

petepete• 2 days ago

/s isn't necessary, sarcasm shouldn't be signposted.

the_gipsy• 2 days ago

I've been using tig, written in C, for ages now, never once crashed. And I'm all for safe languages, but a git TUI isn't really as critical as you imply - if I interpreted the sarcasm correctly.

hoppp3• 2 days ago

I just use the regular git cli. Works fine.

blueaquilae2• 2 days ago

This is just a copy of LazyGit the original and long player git in tui

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

I will probably merge these into main README file, but have a look at https://github.com/simoarpe/ziggity/blob/main/docs/ENHANCEME...

ind-igo• 2 days ago

I'm amazed at the comments on this.

insane_dreamer4• 2 days ago

lazygit works great and fast enough

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

Check https://github.com/simoarpe/ziggity/blob/main/docs/ENHANCEME...

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

Happy to receive feedback and suggestions if you have any. I've used Lazygit for several years, and it's an amazing project, but I'm much faster and productive with Ziggity now: you'll never leave the TUI, and the text is selectable with the mouse.

robertheadley• 2 days ago

I know what these words mean, but if I didn't this would be a whole lot of nonsense.

icase• 2 days ago

i appreciate that it’s not more rust slop, but i never understood the need for a git frontend.

insane_dreamer4• 2 days ago

I started using lazygit a couple years ago, never looked back. It’s great

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

I've used Lazygit daily for almost four years. It's a fantastic project, and I suggest donating to Jesse as he did a great job.

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.

If you decide to give Ziggity a try, I'm happy to receive feedback

jodysalt• 2 days ago

I think it can be helpful sometimes when looking at large diffs.

I tend to use the tools in GitHub/Bitbucket. But, I can see how this could be a good alternative.

lnenad2• 2 days ago

I actually made the same thing in Rust https://github.com/lnenad/difiko

Just FYI a large portion is vibecoded for those that don't like that.

alimbada• 2 days ago

I like the Zig+Git+TTY portmanteau.

hoppp3• 2 days ago

I like it but the donut animation is not needed, overbuilding gives AI slop vibes

I would love to use it without gimmicks.

jllyhill2• 2 days ago

Because it is, Claude is one of the two contributors. Just another slop project made farming HN points and marketing.

mayhemducks• 2 days ago

If Quagmire were in charge of naming things.

PrimalPower• 2 days ago

i've always found magit better than any opinionated git terminal UI. Including LazyGit.

With Claude, i find myself reaching for Magit even less.

NamlchakKhandro• 2 days ago

Need to change the logo to one of a guy with a massive chin and a creepy stare.

temphaaa• 2 days ago

just use lazygit, i don't see why i would care if it's zig/go/rust or whatever compiled language

TheSorcerer12• 2 days ago

Have a look at https://github.com/simoarpe/ziggity/blob/main/docs/ENHANCEME...

sashank_15093• 1 day ago

Serious suggestion, as we’re going to get many such submissions in the future.

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.

Ziggity – A terminal UI for Git, written in Zig

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