diff-easy

A local, browser-based git diff viewer built for AI-agent workflows. Run one always-on server and review diffs across all your repos from a tabbed hub — then hand your review straight to a coding agent.

It does a few things a plain diff viewer doesn't:

• 🗂️ One hub, every repo. Open folders (or a GitHub PR) as tabs and switch between them without spinning up a server per project.
• 💬 Comments you can hand to an agent. Leave review comments on any line, then copy them as a ready-to-paste prompt for Claude Code, Cursor, or any agent.
• ⏱️ A per-turn agent timeline. Snapshot the working tree at every agent turn, so you can replay exactly what each turn of a coding-agent session changed — live.
• 🧭 File organization modes. Reorganize a diff's file list by folder, by module, by relationship, or by AI-inferred intent (via Claude) — not just the flat tree.

diff-easy is built on a vendored copy of difit (MIT). See NOTICE.md for attribution.

Install

npm install -g diff-easy

Then run diff-easy inside any git repo, or start the hub (below). Requires Node 18+.

The hub — review many repos from one place

The hub is an always-on server. Point it at the folders that hold your repos, and it discovers every git repo underneath them:

diff-easy hub --root ~/code --root ~/work

It opens a browser at http://localhost:4966. Pick a folder — or paste a GitHub PR URL — and it opens as a tab. Open as many as you like and switch between them; each tab remembers its own diff selection, filters, and comments.

Because it's always on, most people run it once in the background on login. A handy shell alias:

# ~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc — start the hub once, in the background
alias dh='nohup diff-easy hub --root ~/code --root ~/work > ~/diff-easy-hub.log 2>&1 &'

Now dh from anywhere brings the hub up (it's a no-op if already running). The port defaults to 4966 (override with --port or $DIFIT_HUB_PORT).

Comments you can hand to an agent

Click any line to leave a comment — a code-review note, a fix request, a question. Then Copy All Prompt turns every open comment into a single, structured prompt (file, line, and your note) that you paste straight into a coding agent. Per-thread Copy Prompt does the same for one comment.

This is the core loop diff-easy is built around: review in the browser → copy → paste to the agent → let it fix. No integration or API keys — it's just your clipboard.

Per-turn agent timeline

diff-easy can record what each turn of a coding-agent session changes, so you can replay the session diff-by-diff. Install the capture hook once:

diff-easy init             # every repo (writes to ~/.claude/settings.json)
diff-easy init --project   # or just this repo (./.claude/settings.json)

This installs two Claude Code hooks that snapshot your entire working tree at each turn boundary (capturing edits from both the Edit/Write tools and shell commands). Capture is decoupled from viewing — turns are recorded whether or not the viewer is open, so you can review a session after the fact.

In the viewer, the review menu lets you pick a session and step through its turns, or stay on Working tree to auto-advance as the agent works:

Snapshots are anchored under refs/difit/snapshots (so they survive git gc and never touch your branches); each session keeps its most recent 50 turns. To wipe them:

git update-ref -d refs/difit/snapshots && git gc --prune=now && rm -rf .difit-turns

File organization modes

A diff-easy exclusive (difit only has the folder tree). When a diff spans many files, the Organize menu reorganizes the file list along a different axis — pick whichever makes the change easiest to read:

• Tree — the literal folder hierarchy (the default).
• Smart — groups related files by relationship. Instant and local.
• Module — flat buckets by top-level area (e.g. src/server, src/client, docs).
• AI — semantic cohorts named by intent — what each group of changes actually does — ordered for a sensible review pass, with generated/noise files folded away.

AI mode is powered by the local claude CLI (Claude Haiku by default), so it needs no API key or cloud backend; it runs only when you pick it, caches the result, and falls back to Smart if the CLI isn't available.

Filter & search

Narrow the file list by glob, extension, or change status, and search diff content across every file (Cmd/Ctrl+F) with match highlighting and next/prev.

Light and dark themes, font, and syntax highlighting live under the ⚙️ Settings menu.

Quick single-repo mode

Don't need the hub? Run diff-easy directly in a repo to view one diff and exit:

diff-easy                # all uncommitted changes vs HEAD (default)
diff-easy working        # unstaged only
diff-easy staged         # staged only
diff-easy HEAD~3 HEAD    # a commit range
diff-easy --pr <url>     # a GitHub PR

Use from CMUX

Inside a CMUX workspace, toggle the hub in a browser split beside your terminal, scoped to the current repo:

diff-easy cmux toggle    # open the split for this repo, or close it if open

Running it in another workspace re-points the shared hub to that repo.

Develop

pnpm install
pnpm run build       # build CLI + client
pnpm test            # run tests

License

MIT — see LICENSE and NOTICE.md.