Discussion: Git Worktrees

[colinmollenhour]

Hi Bryan, great project! I love how small it is. One issue that I'm thinking about is multiple agents conflicting with each other on the working copy. One solution for this could be to run multiple agents in different git worktrees. It might be as simple as some additional instructions in the directory like:

• when starting a new feature, create a new worktree on a new branch (maybe some keyword like "major feature" or "worktree feature")
• run a script like "pnpm run prepare" to perform any prep steps (e.g. creating a .env file, seeding a database, etc)
• perform the work
• commit changes
• merge them into the main branch and resolve conflicts and run tests

Of course that can be done manually which is what I'm doing now, I'm wondering if with a workflow like this it would be more feasible to create agents that work in parallel as long as the task tree is well-designed. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but curious about your thoughts and experiences with using track-cli - I just recently discovered it so haven't actually used it yet. :D

I just came from working with "claude-flow" which I found to be a big disorganized monstrosity of dozens of features all slapped together which sounded nice, but in practice was horrible. The MCP servers consumed over 120k tokens, lol. But I liked the overall idea of being able to kick off larger tasks and having multiple agents working in parallel.

[lackeyjb]

Hey thank you for your comment! I've been dogfooding track-cli on a few personal projects, but I haven't gotten around to testing multi-agent workflows too much yet. SQLite WAL is already set up for concurrency, so I'm thinking a simple addition would be to add a check if a track is "in_progress" already when attempting to update. If you're interested in testing it out let me know. I think this could be a solid addition!

[colinmollenhour]

Thanks for the feedback, I guess what I'm wanting to know is how open you are to major changes? I've got a slew of ideas that I'm starting to implement and I think between contributing them all back to this project and forking, it could go either way. I'm not looking to make this a huge project or get github famous on it - but value collaboration and feedback. But I'm sure you've got a lot going on as well and if you'd rather not be innundated with new PRs and discussions then it may be easier for both of us if I fork.. Thoughts?

For example, I'm adding dependencies, worktrees, a web UI.. Here's where I'm at currently:

That said, once it's where I like it my activity will probably fall off a cliff.. :)

[lackeyjb]

This looks looks great! The only goal I have with the project is to keep the API minimal for agents to work with because I've found so far that less is usually more 😅. I'm open to PRs, changes, discussions, etc. I had considered a web UI but hadn't gotten around to it yet. I think there could be a way of separating agent vs human APIs through MCP and skills.

Either way let me know what you decide because I'm curious what you end up with!

[colinmollenhour]

Agreed on keeping it simple and minimal, trying not to bloat it..

I think I need to get more real-world use with it for a week or so to see how it goes before deciding to take it further or adjusting. Here is what I've added so far: main...colinmollenhour:track-cli:main

In short:

• worktrees
• dependencies
• web ui
• claude code skills and agents

It's a little bit like using Copilot on the web, but locally with your preferred agent - you can just quickly queue up new tasks and the agent is able to implement them faster than I can write them!

[lackeyjb]

I just did a read through. This looks great so far! I've been meaning to add blockers so that in itself would be a great value-add. The worktree addition is minimal and would be super useful too I think. Was your thought with the UI as a way to monitor agents ' progress in addition to being able to CRUD tracks? That could be pretty cool.

Also really curious to try out the SPARC workflow. It looks like it would work really well combined with tracks.

Thank you again for sharing this! Awesome work so far! 👏

[colinmollenhour]

Was your thought with the UI as a way to monitor agents ' progress in addition to being able to CRUD tracks?

Yes, basically feature parity with the CLI, just an alternative for when I'm feeling lazy. No real plans past that.

Feel free to merge my entire branch if you want, but no pressure or rush. Will let you know as it develops.

[lackeyjb]

@colinmollenhour would you be okay if I, or you ,split your branch into separate PRs? I'm thinking one for worktrees, dependency management, web UI, and SPARC agents. I just realized as I was testing the branch it's pretty big 😅

[colinmollenhour]

For the most part each separate feature is in a different commit so if you just want to code review I'd recommend just looking one commit at a time. Splitting it up into separate PRs would be rather tedious, but you're welcome to if you want, of course.

[colinmollenhour]

I just discovered https://github.com/steveyegge/beads which seems to be very similar to the direction I've been heading so I'm going to take a break and give that a try for a while - just FYI. Here's what the web UI looks like in the current state: