Difflicious

A local diff viewer for comparing your working directory to any branch, not just HEAD.
No forge, no push — just run it in your repo.

Screenshots

Usage

The quickest way — no install required:

uvx difflicious

Or with Docker:

docker run -it --rm -v "$PWD:/workspace" -p 5000:5000 insipid/difflicious

Then open http://localhost:5000 in your browser.

Installation

For regular use, install from PyPI:

pip install difflicious
difflicious

See INSTALLATION.md for Docker, source installation, and full configuration options.

If you prefer not to install globally, add one of these to your shell profile:

# via uvx
difflicious() { uvx difflicious "$@"; }

# via Docker (uses DIFFLICIOUS_PORT if set, otherwise 5000)
difflicious() { docker run -it --rm -v "$PWD:/workspace" -p "${DIFFLICIOUS_PORT:-5000}:${DIFFLICIOUS_PORT:-5000}" insipid/difflicious "$@"; }

Features

Like your favourite forge, and then some:

• Side-by-side diff view with line numbering
• Syntax highlighting for 100+ languages (via Pygments)
• Context expansion to see more surrounding code
• Search and filter across files
• Light and dark themes
• Live auto-reload on file changes (SSE)
• Font customization via DIFFLICIOUS_FONT environment variable
• Compare against any branch — defaults to remote HEAD, configurable per session
• Toggle staged and unstaged changes independently
• UI state is persistent — collapsed files, hidden files, and view settings are remembered in the browser across sessions

Configuration

All options can be set via environment variable or CLI flag:

See INSTALLATION.md for full configuration details.

Technology

• Backend: Flask, GitPython, Pygments, unidiff
• Frontend: Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS
• Real-time: Server-Sent Events

Documentation

• INSTALLATION.md — installation options, configuration, environment variables
• DEVELOPING.md — development setup, testing, code conventions
• CHANGELOG.md — version history
• docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md — common issues

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.