Worktrunk

★ Worktrunk

25 May, 2026 • 825 words • 4 min

Git worktree management for parallel AI agent workflows

I stumbled upon worktrunk (wt) due to a fortunate coincidence, serendipity at its best. I was pitching my own pancake wt to someone, and this person asked if I hadn’t heard of worktrunk.

If you look at its git star history¹, you’ll notice that it became popular only at the beginning of 2026, whereas I wrote my wt back in November 2025. I did proper diligence at the time but couldn’t find anything resembling my vision. Normally I prefer to reuse rather than writing from scratch.

“AI agent workflows” is a tagline that does not convince me. If anything, it actually worsens my appeal to try out the software. Seriously. Riding the wave is not helpful.

What really sold me was its usage examples. I was able to immediately tell that it had very similar goals to my own wt (sans AI).

Setup #

First, install worktrunk:

shell

brew install worktrunk

It is as simple (and rusty!) as it could be:

     shell
     
   
% brew ls worktrunk
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/worktrunk/0.53.0/.crates.toml
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/worktrunk/0.53.0/.crates2.json
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/worktrunk/0.53.0/bin/wt
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/worktrunk/0.53.0/etc/bash_completion.d/wt
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/worktrunk/0.53.0/sbom.spdx.json
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/worktrunk/0.53.0/share/fish/vendor_completions.d/wt.fish
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/worktrunk/0.53.0/share/zsh/site-functions/_wt

Shell completion is a bonus that you’ll definitely want, as noted in a previous post:

     ~/.zshrc.d/plugins.zsh
     shell 
   
# worktrunk: https://worktrunk.dev/
(( $+commands[wt] )) && eval "$(wt config shell init zsh)"

The snippet above integrates well with my own dotfiles; a vanilla setup that most people should follow is, instead, wt config shell install, which will populate your .bashrc / .zshrc accordingly with wt config shell init.

The shell integration alone makes it compelling enough to switch to wt, but we’re not done yet.

Workflow #

It is possible to customize wt. I value muscle memory and the ability to easily recall commands, therefore I crafted this basic configuration to facilitate the migration from my own wt:

     ~/.config/worktrunk/config.toml
     toml 
   
worktree-path = "{{ repo_path }}/.worktrees/{{ branch | sanitize }}"

[aliases]
add = "wt switch --create {{ args }}"
bd = "wt remove -D {{ args }}"
cd = "wt switch {{ args }}"
checkout = "wt switch {{ args }}"
cleanup = "wt step prune {{ args }}"
co = "wt switch {{ args }}"
commit = "wt step commit {{ args }}"
create = "wt switch --create {{ args }}"
del = "wt remove {{ args }}"
delete = "wt remove {{ args }}"
goto = "wt switch --no-cd {{ args }}"
ls = "wt list {{ args }}"
new = "wt switch --create {{ args }}"
prune = "wt step prune {{ args }}"
rm = "wt remove {{ args }}"
tui = "wt switch {{ args }}"
world = "wt step prune {{ args }}"
xl = "wt list {{ args }}"

[pre-start]
prek = "test -f .pre-commit-config.yaml && prek install --install-hooks || true"

[pre-merge]
prek = "test -f .pre-commit-config.yaml && prek run --from-ref \"$(git symbolic-ref --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD)\" --to-ref HEAD || true"

You can start by running wt config create and then iterating upon the newly generated config file, which is very well documented. What a great developer experience!

Let’s break it down.

We start with wt add <feature> (upstream: wt switch --create). This will create a worktree:

     shell
     
   
tperrotta ~/Workspace/perrotta.dev git:master!?
% wt add myfeature
◎ Running pre-start user:prek
  test -f .pre-commit-config.yaml && prek install --install-hooks || true
prek installed at `/Users/tperrotta/Workspace/perrotta.dev/.git/hooks/pre-commit`
✓ Created branch myfeature from master and worktree @ ~/Workspace/perrotta.dev/.worktrees/myfeature
  39.06s user 6.26s system 251% cpu 17.984 total

tperrotta ~/Workspace/perrotta.dev/.worktrees/myfeature git:myfeature ⎇ myfeature
% git st
## myfeature...master

At any time, we can check the current status with wt xl (upstream: wt list):

     shell
     
   
tperrotta ~/Workspace/perrotta.dev/.worktrees/myfeature git:myfeature ⎇ myfeature
% wt xl
  Branch     Status        HEAD±    main↕  Remote⇅  Path                    Commit    Age   Message
@ myfeature      _                                  ./.worktrees/myfeature  23df7c41  50m   name author explicitly
^ master      !? ^|      +5   -6              |     .                       23df7c41  50m   name author explicitly

○ Showing 2 worktrees, 1 with changes

When opening a new shell, we can easily switch to the newly created worktree from the repo root with wt cd (upstream: wt switch):

     shell
     
   
tperrotta ~/Workspace/perrotta.dev git:master!?
% wt cd myfeature
○ Switched to worktree for myfeature @ ~/Workspace/perrotta.dev/.worktrees/myfeature

tperrotta ~/Workspace/perrotta.dev/.worktrees/myfeature git:myfeature ⎇ myfeature
%

Once we are done (e.g. created/merged a pull request), we can delete the worktree with wt bd or wt del (upstream: wt remove -D).

That’s all! The core workflow steps are quite easy to assimilate.

You’ll notice that my worktrees are created in a .worktrees directory within the git repository root. This is due to my setting worktree-path in the config file. The default behavior of worktrunk is to use sibling directories (e.g. ../myrepo.myfeature from the git root).

As you can see from my config file, I have also integrated prek (pre-commit) to it:

the creation of a worktree yields prek install
the merge of a worktree (not covered in this post) yields prek run on the affected commits

wt has many other features; this is just the tip of the iceberg.

GitHub stars are a vanity metric but they are occasionally useful. ↩︎

Backlinks

cmux (Jul 07, 2026)

¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

★ Worktrunk

Setup #

Workflow #

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★ Worktrunk

Setup #

Workflow #

Related Posts

cmux

wt: exec shell vs shell integration

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