drift

Surface git workspace decay across many projects. Companion to paleo.

For each git repo under one or more root directories, report: branch, ahead/behind vs upstream, dirty file count, last commit age. Designed to answer "what have I been ignoring?" in one screen.

$ drift
drift · 9 repos

  repo            branch     dirty   ahead/behind  last commit  flags
  --------------- ---------- ----- -------------- ------------  ----------------
  primary-app     master       19            0/0          <1d  D19
  side-project    master        4           16/0          <1d  D4 ↑16
  parked-thing    main          2            1/0          2mo  D2 ↑1 stalled
  shipped-thing   main          0            0/0          12d
  tooling         master        0              —           3d  no-upstream
  …

Flags

• D<N> — dirty file count
• ↑<N> / ↓<N> — ahead/behind upstream
• no-upstream — branch tracks nothing
• no-commits — repo initialized but has no commits yet
• stalled — dirty and untouched (no commit or edit) for >= --stale-days

A detached HEAD shows as detached@<sha> in the branch column.

Use

drift                                   # scan $HOME up to depth 2
drift ~/work ~/personal                 # scan multiple roots
drift --only-flagged                    # hide clean repos
drift --sort age                        # most-neglected repo first
drift --max-depth 3                     # deeper walk
drift --stale-days 7                    # tighter stall threshold
drift --exclude 'backup-*'             # skip repos matching a glob
drift --exclude 'archive-*' --exclude '*.bak'  # multiple exclusions
drift --json | jq                       # machine-readable
watch -ct drift --color always --only-flagged   # live dashboard, like top for repos

Output is colorized on a TTY (stalled in red, dirty in yellow, clean rows dimmed) and plain when piped. --color always|never overrides; NO_COLOR is honored. Sort with --sort signal|age|dirty|name (default signal = most actionable first).

Exit code: 1 if any repo needs attention — dirty above --dirty-warn (default 1) or stalled. 0 otherwise. A clean repo that's merely old (a finished, shipped project) does not fail.

Install

git clone https://github.com/sb-arnav/drift ~/drift
ln -s ~/drift/drift.py ~/.local/bin/drift   # optional

Stdlib only. Python 3.10+.

Why not just gita / mu-repo / myrepos?

• Self-contained single file, stdlib only. No gita add, no YAML, no mrconfig — point it at a directory and go.
• Looks at the mtime of dirty files, not just commit dates — so "I edited but never committed" counts as activity, and an old commit with fresh edits isn't mistaken for abandoned.
• stalled combines staleness + dirtiness into a single attention signal that no other tool in this space names.

License

MIT.