bonsai

bonsai is a friendly CLI for managing git worktrees.

If AI coding tools keep spawning branches and worktrees all over a repo, bonsai helps keep things tidy. It shows what exists, what is stale, what has a PR, what still has unpushed work, and what is safe to clean up.

Why bonsai?

git worktree is powerful, but the day-to-day experience is still pretty manual:

• hard to see everything at a glance
• easy to forget stale worktrees
• annoying to tell what has been pushed or merged
• no quick cleanup flow

bonsai fixes that with a small CLI that feels made for real branch-heavy workflows.

Install

go install github.com/sauravpanda/bonsai@latest

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/sauravpanda/bonsai
cd bonsai
make install

Requirements:

• Go 1.21+
• Optional: GitHub CLI for PR status and PR creation

Quick Start

bonsai new feat/search
bonsai list
bonsai push --pr --remove
bonsai clean

Typical flow:

1. Create a worktree for a task.
2. See all active worktrees in one place.
3. Push and open a PR when the work is ready.
4. Clean up merged or stale worktrees without guesswork.

Core Commands

bonsai list

See every worktree with branch, age, last commit, ahead/behind status, and PR state.

bonsai list
bonsai list --no-pr
bonsai list --offline

Example output:

  #   PATH                              BRANCH                AGE    LAST COMMIT              +/-      PR
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
      ~/projects/myapp                  main                  2h     chore: bump deps         +0/-0    -
  1   .claude/worktrees/feat-auth       feat/auth             3d     add OAuth flow           +4/-0    open
  2   .claude/worktrees/fix-payments    fix/payments          21d    fix stripe webhook       +0/-0    merged
  3   .claude/worktrees/feat-dashboard  feat/dashboard        8d     WIP: new dashboard       +2/-0    none

bonsai new <branch>

Create a new worktree and branch from the configured base branch.

bonsai new feat/search
bonsai new fix/login --base develop
bonsai new spike/idea --open

bonsai push [branch-or-path]

Push a worktree branch, optionally create a PR, and optionally remove the worktree afterward.

bonsai push
bonsai push feat/search
bonsai push --pr
bonsai push --web
bonsai push --pr --remove

bonsai clean

Open an interactive picker for merged, stale, or otherwise removable worktrees.

bonsai clean
bonsai clean --all
bonsai clean --stale 7
bonsai clean --force

Keys: up/down move, space toggle, a select all, n select none, enter confirm, q quit

bonsai prune

Review deletion candidates one by one in a non-TUI flow.

bonsai prune
bonsai prune --dry-run
bonsai prune -y

bonsai rm <n> [n...]

Remove worktrees by the numbers shown in bonsai list.

bonsai rm 2
bonsai rm 1 3 5
bonsai rm --dry-run 2
bonsai rm --force 2

More Useful Commands

bonsai switch      # interactive picker that prints a cd command
bonsai status      # dashboard view of working tree state
bonsai stats       # summary across all worktrees
bonsai sync        # rebase or merge all worktrees from base
bonsai open 2      # open a worktree in your editor
bonsai snapshot    # archive a worktree before deleting it
bonsai doctor      # detect broken or orphaned worktrees

Safety Defaults

• Never deletes worktrees with unpushed commits unless --force is used
• Supports --dry-run on destructive flows
• Gracefully works without GitHub auth
• Uses the gh CLI instead of managing GitHub tokens directly

Configuration

Global config lives at ~/.config/bonsai/config.toml.

stale_threshold_days = 14
default_remote = "origin"
default_base = "main"
ticket_pattern = "([A-Z]+-\\d+)"

Per-repo overrides are supported with .bonsai.toml at the repo root.

GitHub Integration

If gh is installed and authenticated, bonsai can:

• show PR status in bonsai list
• detect merged branches for cleanup
• open PRs from bonsai push --pr

Setup:

gh auth login

Without gh, bonsai still works. GitHub-specific fields just fall back to unknown status.

License

MIT