Strand User Guide

Strand is a fast, keyboard-first Git client built for reviewing what AI coding agents do to your code — and a complete everyday Git client at the same time. This guide covers everything the app can do today and how to drive it from the keyboard.

What Strand is#

Strand is a native desktop app that treats agent-driven development as a first-class workflow:

• A dedicated Review view shows an agent's changes as whole files with edits inline, backed by a review queue, pinnable baselines ("everything since this commit" — including work the agent already staged or committed), inline notes, and a one-click feedback export you can paste back into the agent.
• The Worktrees pane shows each checkout’s branch, directory, working changes, and latest commit, with visible Open and Review vs base actions. Merge & clean up remains in the worktree context menus.
• Workspaces group the repositories behind one product and let you review changes across all of them in a single merged queue.

It is also a full everyday client: staging down to individually selected lines, a commit graph with inline stashes and full-history search, interactive rebase without an editor ever popping up, branches, remotes, tags, stashes, submodules, a three-way merge editor, and a command palette (Mod+K) that reaches nearly everything.

Strand is keyboard-first but never keyboard-only — the mouse stays first-class throughout. Network operations (fetch, pull, push, clone) and commit signing shell out to your system git, so SSH keys, credential helpers, hooks, and GPG/SSH signing work exactly as they do on the command line.

Status#

This guide describes Strand 1.0. Releases are published on GitHub Releases; the in-app updater keeps installs current on macOS, Windows, and the Linux AppImage (.deb/.rpm installs update through your package manager). Stable publication is fail-closed on platform signing and release-candidate validation, so a source checkout can reach 1.0.0 before the public release appears.

Strand is open source under AGPL-3.0, free for individuals forever, with an honor-system commercial license for companies — no license keys, feature gating, or telemetry.

Platforms#

Installers are small — roughly 15 MB for the direct Windows MSI and Linux .deb/.rpm, about 31 MB for the universal macOS DMG. The auto-updater covers the macOS app bundle, direct Windows MSI installs, and the Linux AppImage; Microsoft Store MSIX installs update through the Store, while .deb/.rpm installs update through your package manager.

Guide contents#