Git Branch Organiser

A lightweight Electron desktop application for managing local git branches. Built for developers who accumulate many local branches from code reviews and experimentation, and want a safe, visual way to clean them up.

Problem

When you regularly check out PR branches locally for review, your local branch list grows quickly. Deleting branches via CLI is tedious and risky — you might lose work you meant to keep. Git Branch Organiser gives you a visual interface to see what's safe to delete and a recycle bin so nothing is permanently lost until you say so.

Core Features

Branch Tree View

• Displays local branches as a tree based on the / delimiter (e.g. feature/auth/login renders nested under feature > auth)
• Shows for each branch:
  • Ahead/behind counts relative to its remote tracking branch
  • Human-readable status — e.g. "Remote branch deleted", "2 unpushed commits", "No remote tracking branch (local only)", "Up to date with remote"
  • Last commit date and message
• The currently checked-out branch is visually distinguished and excluded from selection
• Default sort order: alphabetical

Multi-Select & Power-User UX

• Click to toggle selection on individual branches (additive — does not replace existing selection)
• Shift+Click to apply the last action across a range:
  • If the last click checked a branch, Shift+Click checks the entire range
  • If the last click unchecked a branch, Shift+Click unchecks the entire range
• Select All / Deselect All controls in the toolbar

Safe Deletion via Recycle Bin

• "Deleting" a branch performs a soft delete — the branch is renamed to recyclebin/<original-branch-path> (preserving the full path for potential future restore)
  • This is a fast git branch -m operation, not an actual deletion
• If a branch literally named recyclebin already exists (which would conflict with the namespace), the app tries recyclebin2, recyclebin3, etc. until an available prefix is found
• Warning popup when moving branches that have:
  • Unpushed commits (ahead of remote)
  • No remote tracking branch at all (purely local, never pushed)
  • Remote tracking branch that has been deleted

Recycle Bin Management

• "Empty Recycle Bin" button permanently deletes all branches under the recyclebin/ prefix
• Shows a loading spinner during deletion (this may take time with many branches)
• For now, only deletes local branches

Multi-Repo Support

• Open multiple git repositories as tabs within the application
• Each tab operates independently on its own repo

Session Persistence

• Open tabs and branch data are cached in localStorage so the app restores your session on restart
• On startup, cached branches are displayed immediately (no loading spinner) while a background refresh fetches the latest state for all open repos

Tech Stack

Layer	Choice	Rationale
Desktop shell	Electron	Mature ecosystem, direct Node.js access for git operations
Build tooling	Electron Forge	Officially recommended Electron build/package tool
Frontend	Svelte 4	Lightweight, simple reactivity model — fits the narrow UI scope
Git operations	simple-git	Well-maintained TypeScript-friendly wrapper around git CLI
Language	TypeScript	End-to-end type safety, both main and renderer processes
Bundler	Vite	Fast HMR in development, used via Electron Forge Vite plugin

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                Renderer (Svelte)             │
│  ┌─────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────────┐  │
│  │ Tab Bar │ │Branch    │ │ Recycle Bin   │  │
│  │         │ │Tree View │ │ Panel        │  │
│  └─────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────────┘  │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │  localStorage (session persistence)  │   │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────┘   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│              IPC (contextBridge)             │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│              Main Process (Node.js)         │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │  Git Service (simple-git)            │   │
│  │  - list branches (batched query)     │   │
│  │  - rename (soft delete)              │   │
│  │  - delete (empty recycle bin)        │   │
│  │  - branch warnings (batched query)   │   │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────┘   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Main process handles all git operations via simple-git. No git commands run from the renderer.
• Renderer communicates with the main process via Electron IPC (exposed through contextBridge/preload).
• Each open repo tab corresponds to a separate simple-git instance pointed at that directory.
• Branch listing uses a single batched git for-each-ref call to fetch all branch metadata at once, keeping load times fast even with hundreds of branches.

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start in development mode (with hot reload)
npm start

Future Features

• Restore from recycle bin — move branches back from recyclebin/ to their original path
• Branch grouping/filtering — group by "my branches" vs "others'" (by commit author), filter by last activity date
• Custom sort orders — sort by last commit date, ahead/behind count, etc.
• Remote branch deletion — option to also delete the remote tracking branch
• Batch operations — bulk merge-status checking, bulk fetch