hunk

Reviewing a diff in a pager works while the diff is small and yours. It stops working when the change spans fifteen files and you didn’t write any of it — which is now a normal Tuesday, because an agent wrote it and you’re the reviewer.

hunk is a terminal UI built for exactly that: a sidebar of the changed files, one pane of the diff, keyboard and mouse navigation, and a layout that adapts to your terminal width. It reads Git, and also Jujutsu and Sapling.

Install link

  npm install -g hunkdiff
brew install hunk
curl -fsSL https://hunk.dev/install.sh | sh
mise use -g hunk
  

MIT licensed. Node 18+ if you install from npm; the other paths ship a binary.

Use it link

  hunk diff                     # working-tree changes
hunk diff --watch             # re-read as files change
hunk show                     # the last commit
hunk show HEAD~1              # any commit
hunk diff before.ts after.ts  # two files, no repository needed
git diff --no-color | hunk patch -
  

The habit that makes it stick is making it Git’s pager:

  git config --global core.pager "hunk pager"
  

Now git diff, git show, and git log -p all open in it, and you don’t have to remember a new command to get the better view.

--watch is the one to try first. Leave hunk diff --watch open in a split while an agent works, and the review updates itself as files land — you’re reading the change as it happens instead of facing all of it at the end.

Configure it once link

~/.config/hunk/config.toml, or .hunk/config.toml to set it per project:

  theme = "github-dark-default"   # or "auto" to follow the terminal
mode = "auto"                   # auto | split | stack
vcs = "git"                     # git | jj | sl
watch = false
line_numbers = true
wrap_lines = false
sidebar = "auto"
  

mode is worth setting deliberately: split for a wide monitor where side-by-side helps, stack on a laptop where side-by-side halves your usable columns.

One thing it doesn’t do link

It reviews; it does not stage. There’s no “stage this hunk” key — for building a commit out of parts of your working tree, that’s still git add -p, or lazygit, which does it with a keystroke per hunk. hunk’s job ends at understanding the change.

That division is the honest way to fit it into the workflow:

delta and hunk overlap and you don’t need both — delta is a syntax-highlighting pager that improves every diff you already look at; hunk is a place you go to review, with file navigation and layout control. Try hunk when the diffs you read are big and someone else’s.

Next link

Catch problems before the diff is even written → pre-commit hooks