Skip to main content

autowt: a better git worktree experience

Full documentation

What are worktrees?

Worktrees are a built-in feature of git, which are essentially free clones of a local git repo. History is shared and synced across all worktrees for a given repo. Creating a new worktree is cheap, and you can list all your worktrees with a single command. This makes them a great fit for doing work “in parallel,” or not worrying about having uncommitted changes before working on another branch.

How autowt simplifies common workflows

While worktrees are powerful, the built-in tooling is minimalistic. Consider what it takes to set up a fresh worktree in a typical workflow:

  1. Make a decision about where to put the worktree
  2. git worktree add <worktree_path> -b <branch>
  3. Open a new terminal tab
  4. cd <worktree path>
  5. uv sync or npm install or whatever your dependency setup is
  6. cp <repo_dir>/.env . to copy secrets

Congrats, you're done! Type type type, open a PR, and merge it. Now you need to clean up:

  1. git worktree rm .
  2. Close the tab

On the other hand, with autowt, it looks like this:

autowt <branch>

And deleting branches that have been merged or are associated with closed PRs looks like this:

autowt cleanup

A lot nicer, right?

Now suppose your team uses an issue tracker like Linear which can suggest branch names based on issue IDs. You could configure autowt to have a custom command to automatically open worktrees for tickets instead of passing a branch name:

autowt linear ABC-1234 # opens yourname/abc-1234-title-of-the-ticket or whatever

What autowt can do for you

What autowt can do for you:

Getting started

You'll need Python 3.10+ and a version of git released less than ten years ago (2.5+).

First, install autowt:

pip install autowt

Then, make a new worktree for a new or existing branch in your current repo:

autowt my-new-feature

Watch as autowt creates a new worktree and opens it in a new terminal tab or window.

Contributing

PRs, GitHub issues, discussion topics, bring 'em on!

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Metadata

Release files for autowt 0.5.2

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for autowt 0.5.2
File Size Uploaded
autowt-0.5.2.tar.gz 185.4 kB Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for autowt 0.5.2
File Interpreter ABI Platform
autowt-0.5.2-py3-none-any.whl Python 3 none any Details

Total release size: 252.7 kB

Release files / autowt-0.5.2.tar.gz

Download URL autowt-0.5.2.tar.gz
Size 185.4 kB
Tags Source
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
d6f4cec205e47b1d21f895fe73ae078b7d97746fce5fdb66f4b1d585889d5fa7
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
3f675f4e6306f20bc5f52a0787c7f4a744b1d32b5dfc7d0988479238cf2d462b
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.7

Provenance

Provenance describes where a file came from. On PyPI, provenance is shared via attestations, which provide a verifiable record of the build or publishing details. View details, limitations and caveats.

PyPI Publish Attestation

PyPI verified that this artifact, at this checksum, originated from the publisher listed below.

Signed by GitHub Actions, verified by PyPI on Jan 4, 2026.

Transparency log

Release files / autowt-0.5.2-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL autowt-0.5.2-py3-none-any.whl
Size 67.3 kB
Tags Python 3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
9231c3f95d2c7a93c35aee6583fd5f4d55fd45345b7e4a62589b1c236a42089c
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
e81bf2f3b785d323b4c8b18ac32aeb09e3aef11f7dd9905d6841ff0215396d5e
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.7

Provenance

Provenance describes where a file came from. On PyPI, provenance is shared via attestations, which provide a verifiable record of the build or publishing details. View details, limitations and caveats.

PyPI Publish Attestation

PyPI verified that this artifact, at this checksum, originated from the publisher listed below.

Signed by GitHub Actions, verified by PyPI on Jan 4, 2026.

Transparency log
Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page