Worktrees

A git worktree is a second working copy of the same repository, checked out to a different branch — so you can have several branches open at once without stashing. That’s 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.

Toggle the sidebar between Groups and Worktrees with the chip in its header (the choice persists per project). In the Worktrees view the sidebar shows every worktree in the repo — occupied ones as expandable sections, pane-less ones in the Idle accordion below. Each occupied worktree is a two-line row showing its directory name, a pane count, and its branch on the second line. You get:

Drift detection — see when a pane has wandered out of the worktree it was spawned in.
Rehome a drifted pane — one click on the drift pill re-homes the pane to the worktree it wandered into.
Empty worktrees as launch targets — a worktree with no panes is one click from having one.
Both bare-clone and traditional worktree layouts are handled; non-git projects degrade gracefully (the lens just isn’t offered).
Worktrees created or removed outside Atrium (a terminal, an agent) appear or disappear within a few seconds — no manual refresh.

Idle worktrees

Pane-less worktrees live in a thin Idle · N accordion at the bottom of the list (collapsed by default; the choice persists per project). Rows are one line each — name, dirty dot, branch, and last-activity age — sorted most-recent first, and fade with staleness so an hour-old worktree reads brighter than a month-old one. Hovering a row swaps the age for its actions: a ＋▾ spawn button and a ✕ to remove. The sidebar is the complete worktree surface — if a worktree exists, it’s here.

Spawn anything into any worktree

Every occupied worktree header has a persistent ＋▾ caret, and idle rows reveal the same caret on hover — it 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 — the + New worktree… button on the Idle accordion header (also in the Switcher): 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 — from an idle row’s hover ✕ or any worktree’s right-click menu; a two-gate destructive confirm that warns about panes homed there (and closes them first), and surfaces git’s --force gate separately if the worktree is dirty.
Prune orphaned — git worktree prune, on the worktree right-click menu, 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.

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 header showing the worktree’s branch, path, and dirty state.
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 Pro edition adds $ATRIUM_PORT / $ATRIUM_WORKTREE template variables so two worktrees can run the same dev-server command on distinct ports.

Git tools — the read-only diff and commit graph behind the dirty/drift signals.
The Switcher — jump to any worktree from the keyboard.