Alacritree

A native terminal that turns Git worktrees into first-class workspaces, built on Alacritty.

About

The first ultrafast, FOSS alternative to the LLM/worktree management apps cropping up everywhere. Built around the amazing Alacritty terminal emulator and drop-in compatible with your alacritty.toml.

Minimalist approach, only 3 features:

• Worktree management. Sidebar lists projects and worktrees; one click spawns a shell. Create fresh worktrees in seconds with pre-configured AI configs.
• Git status bar. Per-workspace panel with branch + staged/unstaged files, refreshed in the background.
• Branch diffs. Beautiful and meaningful diffs powered by Delta.

No Chromium, no bundled agents, no telemetry. No company behind it, and there never will be.

Screenshots

test_video_final.mp4

Status: early, single-author project. Linux is the only platform with a working build today — the GUI deps currently target Linux, so the macOS/Windows entries in the install section below are scaffolded but not yet shipping binaries.

Install

Linux

Arch (AUR) — two flavours:

• alacritree-bin — prebuilt binary from the latest GitHub release, no Rust toolchain required, supports x86_64 and aarch64.
• alacritree-git — VCS package that compiles the latest master locally.

yay -S alacritree-bin      # or `alacritree-git`

Prebuilt tarball — every tagged release publishes Linux tarballs (x86_64 and aarch64) at https://github.com/mathix420/alacritree/releases:

tag=v0.1.0   # pick the release you want
arch=x86_64  # or aarch64
curl -fLO "https://github.com/mathix420/alacritree/releases/download/${tag}/alacritree-${tag}-${arch}-linux.tar.gz"
tar -xzf "alacritree-${tag}-${arch}-linux.tar.gz"
install -Dm755 alacritree ~/.local/bin/alacritree

From source — see the Build section.

Windows (Scoop)

scoop bucket add alacritree https://github.com/mathix420/alacritree
scoop install alacritree

The manifest lives in bucket/alacritree.json and is bumped automatically when a release is published. Windows binaries are not produced yet (see Status above); the bucket is wired up and waiting for the first cross-platform release.

macOS (Homebrew, Apple Silicon)

brew tap mathix420/alacritree https://github.com/mathix420/alacritree
brew install alacritree

The formula lives in Formula/alacritree.rb and is bumped automatically on every release. Only aarch64-apple-darwin is shipped — Intel Macs need to build from source via the Build section (install cmake, pkg-config, fontconfig and freetype through Homebrew first).

Build

Workspace MSRV is Rust 1.85 (edition 2024). System packages required on Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install \
    cmake pkg-config \
    libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev \
    libxkbcommon-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev \
    libwayland-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libegl1-mesa-dev

Then:

cargo run -p alacritree              # debug
cargo build -p alacritree --release  # release → target/release/alacritree

Configuration

Alacritree reads the same files Alacritty does, in the same order:

1. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty/alacritty.toml
2. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty.toml
3. $HOME/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml
4. $HOME/.alacritty.toml
5. /etc/alacritty/alacritty.toml

After loading alacritty.toml, Alacritree deep-merges an optional alacritree.toml (same search path) on top. Merge semantics match Alacritty's: arrays concatenate (so [[keyboard.bindings]] in alacritree.toml adds to the upstream bindings rather than replacing them), tables merge recursively, primitives replace.

Alacritree-only options live under [ui] in alacritree.toml — sidebar colours, panel visibility, etc. See alacritree/src/config.rs for the current schema.

Documentation

• docs/alacritree.md — full feature reference for the fork: workspaces and sessions, the project/worktree sidebar (create/delete flows, AI-config copy, branch validation), the git-status panel, the terminal grid (built-in box-drawing, OSC 8 + regex links, OSC 52 clipboard), the two-file config model, and how Alacritree compares against worktree CLIs, AI-agent orchestrators, and other native terminals in the space.
• docs/keyboard-shortcuts.md — every key binding the app understands, split between hard-coded app shortcuts (sidebar toggles, workspace and session switching, modals) and the configurable [[keyboard.bindings]] layer, including the full list of supported action = "…" values and which Alacritty actions are intentionally not wired up.
• docs/features.md — upstream Alacritty's feature overview (vi mode, search, hints, selection expansion). Kept for reference; not everything listed is implemented in the egui shell yet.

Repository layout

This is a Cargo workspace:

• alacritree/ — the fork. GUI shell, sidebars, worktree integration.
• alacritty_terminal/ — vendored from upstream Alacritty; used as a library.
• alacritty/, alacritty_config/, alacritty_config_derive/ — vendored upstream crates. Treated as read-only here; the upstream alacritty GUI binary is not what this fork ships.

Relationship to upstream Alacritty

Alacritree is not a competitor to or replacement for Alacritty. It depends on upstream's terminal crate and would not exist without it.

License

Released under the Apache License, Version 2.0, matching upstream Alacritty.