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Changes View

Changes is a read-only, git-status-sourced view of a session's working tree, shown in the same right-hand side panel as IDE Emulation's file/diff tabs. It exists because IDE-mode sessions never get the CLI's own /diff pane — Switchboard impersonates the IDE, and the IDE protocol never pushes "these files changed", only per-file diffs at permission time. A remote session shows /diff inside its terminal, but that view scrolls away with the session and isn't clickable from Switchboard. Changes gives both kinds the same panel.

Opening it

Click the Changes button in the terminal header, next to the stop button. Click it again to close.

What it shows

  • A header line: N files changed +A −B, plus the current branch and how far it is ahead/behind its upstream.
  • One row per changed file: a state letter (M modified, A added, D deleted, R/C renamed/copied, ? untracked), its path, and its own +added −deleted line counts.
  • Clicking a row opens a read-only diff for that file. Untracked files show a note instead of a diff — git diff never reports them.
  • A Refresh button for a manual pull.

What it doesn't do

  • No staging, committing, or reverting from the UI — this is a viewer, not a git client.
  • It doesn't replace the CLI's /diff pane in a non-IDE session; the two coexist.
  • IDE mode itself is not available for remote sessions (that's a separate, larger feature — an ssh -R tunnel plus a lock file on the host); Changes does not depend on it and works today for both local and remote sessions.

How it refreshes

Changes does not poll. It reloads:

  • The moment you open it.
  • When you click Refresh.
  • The moment the session goes idle (finishes a turn) while the tab is open — for a remote session this costs one ssh round-trip, typically well under a second.

Local vs. remote

The same parser and the same panel render both. Only the command runner differs:

  • Local: git status/git diff run directly against the session's real working directory (its worktree, if it has one — the same directory a claude --resume targets).
  • Remote: the same commands run over the existing ssh connection to the host, against the directory recorded in that session's descriptor. No attach, no tmux — this works even for a session you've never opened a terminal tab for.

Diffs are capped at 512 KB; a diff larger than that is truncated with a note at the bottom.