Worktrees

Git worktrees are how you run parallel agents on parallel branches — one checkout per line of work, no stash juggling. Atrium treats them as a first-class organizing lens, not an afterthought.

The Worktrees sidebar lens

Toggle the sidebar between Groups and Worktrees with the chip in its header (the choice persists per project). In the Worktrees view, each worktree is a two-line row showing its branch and a group-colored status orb for the panes homed there. You get:

• Drift detection — see when a worktree has diverged from its base.
• Empty worktrees as launch targets — a worktree with no panes is one click from having one.
• Move-to-worktree — rehome an existing pane into a worktree.
• Both bare-clone and traditional worktree layouts are handled; non-git projects degrade gracefully (the lens just isn’t offered).

Spawn anything into any worktree

Every worktree row has a ＋▾ caret that opens the full spawn menu — every group’s templates — scoped to that worktree’s directory. An agent template launched this way starts in the worktree, on that branch, with the pane’s live cwd and branch shown in the cockpit.

Lifecycle from the UI

Everything you’d otherwise do with git worktree on the command line:

• New worktree — create a branch off any base (or check out an existing branch); the path is auto-derived from the branch name and editable before you commit.
• Remove worktree — a two-gate destructive confirm: it warns about panes homed there (and closes them first), and surfaces git’s --force gate separately if the worktree is dirty.
• Prune orphaned — one-click git worktree prune, with a prunable-count badge, confirmed before running.

These are the only git writes Atrium performs, and each one is human-initiated and confirmed — the diff and history views stay read-only.

The Inventory

The dock’s Inventory tab is the full worktree catalog with derived metadata: branch, pane count, last-activity age, clean/dirty state, and prunability — with search, sort, and filter. Sort by stale to triage which worktrees to clean up.

Worktree View

For deep work in one worktree, enter Worktree View — a cockpit lens over the main area (from the sidebar or the Switcher):

• A partition selector across your worktrees.
• Agent and shell slots per worktree, with tabbed panes and empty-slot spawn.
• Esc exits; your last main-area view is remembered per project.

It’s a lens, not a separate place — the same panes appear in the sidebar and the Worktree View; nothing is duplicated or moved.

Pro: per-worktree runtime vars

The in-development Pro edition adds $ATRIUM_PORT / $ATRIUM_WORKTREE template variables so two worktrees can run the same dev-server command on distinct ports. See What is Atrium? → Free and Pro.