Git Features

mantis has comprehensive git support built in. Inside any git repository you get status colors, blame, file history, and a dedicated diff-review mode out of the box.

All git data — repo info for the status bar, per-path status for tree coloring, blame annotations, and file diffs — is provided natively via the git CLI.

ℹ️ All git features need git on your PATH and the file to be tracked in a repository.

Git status colors

Whenever mantis can read git status, tree entries are tinted by their state — new, modified, deleted, or ignored — so you can see at a glance what’s changed without doing anything. Control this with git_status in your config (see Configuration).

The status bar also shows how far the current branch is from its upstream when a tracking branch exists, using the familiar ↑3 ↓1 summary.

Git blame

Press Ctrl+b with a file open to toggle full-file blame. The tree panel is replaced by a dedicated blame pane listing every line’s short commit hash, author, relative date, and subject. Navigate it with the usual tree keys (↑/↓, PageUp/PageDown, g/G) — they move the cursor through the file instead of the tree selection while the pane is open. Press Ctrl+b again (or Esc) to close it and return to the tree.

Press B with the content panel focused to toggle a single-line blame bar at the bottom of the tree panel, showing the commit hash, author, date, and subject for the current cursor line.

Blame is disabled while you’re viewing a diff (it only annotates real file content).

Visual-line blame

For inspecting a specific range rather than the whole file, press V with a file open to enter visual-line mode. The first visible line is selected; extend the selection a line at a time with j/k (or ↑/↓), jump to the top/bottom of the file with g/G, and page with PageUp/PageDown. The selected lines are highlighted with a distinct background.

Press b while in visual-line mode to open a blame panel scoped to the selection: each line in the range is listed with its short commit hash, author, relative date, and content. Press b again to dismiss the panel, and Esc to leave visual-line mode entirely. Like the inline gutter, this is unavailable while viewing a diff.

Git file history

With a file open in the content panel, press H to open an fzf-style list of the commits that touched it. Type to fuzzy-filter, navigate with ↑/↓, and press Enter (or double-click) to load the diff of that revision against your current working tree into the content panel — additions in green, deletions in red.

Git mode

Press Ctrl+D to switch the tree to show only files with uncommitted changes (modified, new, deleted, or renamed). Selecting a file shows its working-tree diff in the content panel instead of the file contents. The tree title displays a [git] badge while active — perfect for reviewing everything you’re about to commit.

Press F (while the tree is focused) inside git mode to toggle between the tree view (directories intact) and a flat, depth-0 list of every changed file with relative paths. Press F again to return to the tree view (a no-op outside git mode).

When the working tree is clean (no uncommitted changes), the tree panel shows a “Working tree clean” placeholder instead of an empty list, so you can tell at a glance that there is simply nothing to review. If the current directory is not a git repository, the placeholder says “Not a git repository” instead. Press Ctrl+D to exit git mode in either case.

All directories containing changes are auto-expanded when entering git mode. Diffs refresh on the 30-second auto-reload tick and on manual r.

git_status controls whether tree entries are coloured by git status at startup:

git_status = true        # colour tree entries by git status (default: true)
git_show_deleted = false # show ghost nodes for deleted tracked files (default: false)

Compare mode

To review changes against something other than the working tree’s usual baseline, open the command palette and run Compare against a revision. A prompt appears at the bottom of the content pane — type any revision (a commit hash, a tag, a branch name, or something like HEAD~3) and press Enter. mantis switches into git mode, but the tree now shows only files changed between that revision and your working tree, and opening a file shows git diff <rev> -- <file> instead of the usual working-tree diff. The status bar shows a [compare: <rev>] badge while active.

Press Ctrl+D to leave compare mode and return to full browsing.

Using mantis as git’s pager

mantis can read a diff from stdin (see Pager mode), so it works as a drop-in side-by-side pager for git diff, git show, and git log -p:

git diff | mantis                      # one-off
GIT_PAGER=mantis git log -p            # one-off, any pager-using command
git config --global core.pager mantis  # every git command, permanently