GitWarren

GitWarren is a cross-platform desktop application built by Klarluft B.V. that lets developers review code changes — including uncommitted, staged, and untracked files — directly on their own machine before anything is pushed to GitHub. It is free and open source under GPL-3.0, with the source available at github.com/klarluft/gitwarren-app. The tool is created and maintained by Michal Wrzosek and is currently at v0.1.6.

What It Is

GitWarren fills a gap that every other code review tool leaves open: the moment between when a coding agent finishes its work and when that work becomes a commit. Traditional review tools — GitHub pull requests, GitLab merge requests — require a commit, a push, and an open PR before you can read a diff. GitWarren reads the git worktree directly, folding staged, unstaged, and untracked files into a single reviewable diff on your own machine. No account is required, no data leaves your computer, and all review state is stored in a single SQLite file in your application-data directory.

Local-First Architecture

The "local by construction" design is a deliberate constraint, not a limitation:

• No account, no server. Nothing to sign up for; the app is one person's tool on one machine.
• Nothing cached. Every branch name, commit, and diff is read from git at the moment it is displayed, so nothing goes stale.
• One SQLite file. Reviews and comments live in a single file (gitwarren.db) in the OS application-data directory. Deleting it removes GitWarren entirely without touching any repository.
• Multi-machine reach. GitWarren can reach repositories on other machines over SSH, WSL, or a Tailscale tailnet — reviews live where the code does, not on a central server.

Agent Participation via MCP

GitWarren ships an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server over stdio. Pointing Claude Code, Codex, or any MCP-compatible client at it gives the agent access to seventeen tools — the same service layer the UI uses — including opening reviews, reading discussions, replying in threads, leaving line comments, and resolving threads. Agent comments are always attributed as machine-written, with the tool name taken from the MCP handshake (clientInfo.name) rather than from whatever the model calls itself. Two concurrent agent sessions are kept distinct by a per-session ID minted at startup. The MCP server can run independently of the desktop app; both share the same SQLite database.

Reviewing Uncommitted Work

The core feature is the ability to review a branch against itself — where the merge base of a ref with itself is its own tip, so the diff is exactly what the worktree holds that has not been committed. GitWarren uses git worktree list --porcelain to find whichever worktree holds the head branch, then reads staged, unstaged, and untracked changes from that location. Untracked files are listed with git ls-files --others --exclude-standard and rendered as whole-file additions. Three diff views are available: committed only, all changes (committed + uncommitted), and uncommitted only.

Stack and Deployment Model

GitWarren is built on Electron 44 with TypeScript, React 19, Tailwind CSS v4, and SQLite via better-sqlite3 and Drizzle ORM. The UI and MCP server both call one shared service layer (src/core/services/) — neither surface contains repository or review logic of its own. The desktop app is available as:

• macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel DMG, also via brew install --cask klarluft/tap/gitwarren)
• Windows (NSIS installer, x64 and arm64)
• Linux (AppImage, x86_64 and arm64)

A headless CLI (gitwarren serve) serves the same review UI in a browser tab for machines without a screen or for users who prefer not to install an Electron app. The CLI is available via npx gitwarren or brew install klarluft/tap/gitwarren-cli.

Update: v0.1.6

The latest release is v0.1.6, published on 2026-09-08. The repository was created in September 2026 and has seen active development, with the last push on 2026-09-11. The project is featured on Product Hunt. Auto-update is built in (checks on launch and every 6 hours, downloads in the background, applies on next restart); on macOS, auto-update requires a signed build. The release pipeline produces installers for all three platforms plus daemon tarballs for headless deployment and an npm package for the CLI.