Git Diff Review

Review your local Git changes like a pull request — before you commit. On your machine. Nothing leaves it.

Git Diff Review is a native macOS app that gives you a full GitHub-style review surface for your local working tree. Open any repository, walk every changed file, read the diff in split or unified view, mark files as you review them, leave yourself notes and inline comments — then commit with confidence. It never pushes your code anywhere.

Why you need it

You commit changes you never actually re-read. git diff in the terminal is cramped and easy to skim past. Opening a real pull request just to review your own work is heavyweight — and it forces your code onto a server before it's ready.

Git Diff Review gives you the pull-request review experience, locally:

• Catch the debug log, the stray TODO, the half-finished refactor before it lands in history.
• Review with the same muscle memory you already have from GitHub — file list, viewed checkboxes, split diffs, inline comments.
• Keep everything on your machine. No cloud, no sign-up, no telemetry.

What you get

• A real review surface. Navigate changed files with status badges and addition/deletion counts, jump between hunks, and search files across all your repos at once.
• Staged, unstaged, and untracked — see every kind of change, with rename detection and whitespace noise you can hide.
• Split or unified diffs with syntax highlighting, your choice per session.
• Viewed-file tracking. Tick files off as you go (0/14 viewed) so you never lose your place in a large change.
• Notes and inline comments. Write a rich-text review summary and drop inline comments on specific lines — stored locally and kept across sessions.
• Branch, commit, and PR context. Switch branches, pin a commit to review against, and browse pull requests and history without leaving the app.
• AI walkthroughs (optional). Generate a guided walkthrough of a change to get oriented fast.
• Keyboard-driven. j/k to navigate, v to mark viewed, c to comment, ⌘↵ to submit — review without touching the mouse.
• Native and local. A fast Electron + Vue interface backed by a Go engine that reads Git directly and stores your reviews in local SQLite.

Install

macOS on Apple Silicon. The app is currently in beta and distributed unsigned, so macOS Gatekeeper needs one extra click on first launch.

Download the app

1. Grab the latest .dmg from the Releases page.
2. Open it and drag Git Diff Review to Applications.
3. On first launch, right-click the app → Open, then confirm. (macOS blocks unsigned apps on a normal double-click; right-click → Open only needs doing once.)

Homebrew (planned)

brew install --cask oullin/tap/git-diff

Your code stays yours

Git Diff Review reads your repository state through Git and serves a local API over a Unix socket — it talks only to your machine. Review sessions, comments, events, and preferences are stored in a local SQLite database at:

~/Library/Application Support/git-diff/reviews.sqlite3

It does not publish comments to GitHub, create pull requests, or modify your repository contents. It's a review surface, nothing more.

Build from source

Git Diff Review is a pnpm + Turbo monorepo pairing an Electron/Vue/TypeScript desktop app with a Go backend.

Path	Role
packages/ui	Electron/Vue desktop app and renderer UI.
packages/bridge	TypeScript HTTP client used by Electron.
packages/domain	Shared DTOs + framework-agnostic diff logic, consumed by ui and bridge.
packages/api	Go backend that reads Git diffs and stores reviews.
packages/tools	Turbo cache wrapper and unsigned macOS release helper.

To set up the toolchain, run it locally, and learn the development commands, see docs/development.md. Releases are built with Electron Forge — for tagging, packaging, signing, and the release pipeline, see docs/distribution.md.

License

MIT © Gus Canto