gitview

Which branches are finished, and which only look like they are

A free, open-source tool by DBHQ - documented at skills.dbhq.uk

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What makes it different

One table: worktree, branch, open pull request, ahead, behind, unpushed, and whether the branch is safe to delete.

The last column is the one that is hard. A branch merged by squash stays ahead of the trunk forever while contributing nothing, so commit counts cannot answer it and git branch --merged never sees it.

gitview merges the trunk into a throwaway copy of each branch and compares the resulting tree against the trunk's. If they match, the branch adds nothing and can go.

Both cheap checks fail silently, which is the worst failure mode available: the answer looks right. That is the whole reason this skill exists.

Install

As a Claude Code plugin (recommended)

/plugin marketplace add dbhq-uk/marketplace
/plugin install gitview@dbhq

Any agent (Cursor, Copilot, Windsurf, Gemini, Cline and more)

npx skills add dbhq-uk/gitview-skill

The skills.sh CLI installs into whichever agent directories it finds, so this works outside Claude Code and Codex too.

Local install (Claude Code or Codex)

git clone https://github.com/dbhq-uk/gitview-skill.git
cd gitview-skill
./install.sh          # Claude Code: symlinks into ~/.claude/skills (edits are live)
./install-codex.sh    # Codex: installs into ~/.codex/skills

install.sh and install-codex.sh are the same install two ways: Claude Code substitutes ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}, so the whole skill directory is symlinked untouched, while Codex does not, so its SKILL.md is rewritten at install time. Re-run the Codex one after editing SKILL.md.

Requirements

Python 3 and git. Optionally gh or the Azure CLI, for the pull request column.

Requirements

Python 3, standard library only, and git. Nothing else: the safe-to-delete check is answered from the repository in front of it rather than from a forge API, which is why it works on a private remote you cannot query.

Use

Talk to your agent: "survey the branches in this repo", "what can I delete", "which of these are actually finished".

What it looks like

Real output, from a real run against a repository built to have branches in each of the states this exists to tell apart. The trunk took two of these branches by squash merge, which is the case the obvious checks get wrong: both still read as one commit ahead of the trunk, and git branch --merged lists neither.

Worktree	Branch	PR	Ahead	Behind	Unpushed	Safe to delete
checkout-service	main	-	0	0	0	no, trunk
-	chore/bump-sdk	-	1	1	0	YES
-	feat/vat-rounding	-	1	2	0	YES
-	fix/expired-card-retry	-	1	0	0	no, 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
-	spike/apple-pay	-	1	0	no remote	no, 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
-	wip/rename-basket	-	1	0	no remote	no, 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

Trunk is origin/main.

Read the last column rather than the counts. chore/bump-sdk and feat/vat-rounding are YES because merging the trunk into a throwaway copy of each produces a tree identical to the trunk's - they add nothing, whatever their ahead count says.

The three refusals each name what would be lost: a real diff against the trunk, and for two of them no remote holding a copy of it.

It is a markdown table because your agent renders it. The table above is the output pasted in, not a screenshot of one - so it stays selectable, searchable and readable by a screen reader.

Reproduce it rather than trust it. The repository is built by docs/build-demo-fixture.sh, which comments each branch state as it creates it:

bash docs/build-demo-fixture.sh
python3 skills/gitview/scripts/gitview.py /tmp/gitview-demo/checkout-service

It shows the table first, then offers deletions, and asks before each one. It will not delete a branch that has a worktree or an open pull request, it re-verifies each branch immediately before it goes, and it prints the commit SHA so a wrong call can be undone.

gitview itself deletes nothing. gitview.py is read only - it never deletes, pushes, merges, or checks out an existing branch. The deletions are run by the agent in your session, where you can see them and your own tool permissions apply.

How the safe-to-delete check works

Read skills/gitview/references/safe-to-delete.md before changing anything in that logic.

In short: for each branch, gitview creates a throwaway git index and a detached worktree outside your repository, merges the trunk into a copy of the branch, and compares the resulting tree to the trunk's. Identical trees mean the branch contributes nothing, whatever its ahead count says.

Both temporary artefacts are removed when the check finishes; your working tree and your index are never touched.

Design: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-09-10-gitview-design.md

Also from DBHQ

Every DBHQ agent skill is free, open source and installable from the same marketplace, and all of them are documented at skills.dbhq.uk. The marketplace itself is dbhq-uk/marketplace - one /plugin marketplace add and every one of them is available.

Skill	What it does
outlook	Microsoft 365 mail and calendar, from the terminal
trello	Your boards, run from your agent
legwork	Research that settles a decision, and says when it cannot
dovetail	Checks whether your repository still agrees with itself
verve	Strips AI tells from prose and puts a voice back
vela	Compiler-exact code search, in any language you index
garmin	Your Garmin data, answered in the terminal
imager	Images from GPT Image 2, costed before it spends
atlassian	Jira issues and Confluence pages
pennyblack	A physical letter, posted from the terminal
buildwork	Your open issues, run as parallel agents
deskwork	What an agent noticed, tracked as real work
groupwork	A second agent on the work, adversary or partner
headwork	One decision at a time, with a recommendation

Plus heliograph, for a machine you cannot log into.

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.