magit.kak

A Magit-inspired porcelain for Kakoune. Ships the daily and weekly git verbs as first-class transients, a status buffer, a log browser, blame overlay, interactive rebase, stash/worktree/submodule/bisect sections, and more — keyboard-first, kakoune-native.

Covers ~99% of Magit's daily commands and ~97% of its weekly commands. 19 self-contained modules; no external dependencies beyond git, awk, sed, perl (for blame), and a POSIX shell.

Install

via kak-bundle

bundle magit.kak https://github.com/saifulapm/magit.kak

kak-bundle recursively sources every .kak file in the repo on load; all modules live under rc/, so this loads the whole plugin. No keybindings are defined — magit.kak ships only commands so it never clobbers your keymap. Add the suggested bindings yourself (next section).

Suggested keybindings

magit.kak intentionally ships no keymap. Copy this block into your kakrc (or a kak-bundle config block) and customize freely — it puts every verb under a <space>g (the git) user-mode; kakoune's built-in autoinfo shows each binding and its docstring when you press <space>g.

declare-user-mode git
map global user g ':enter-user-mode git<ret>' -docstring 'magit'

# --- Top-level entry points ---------------------------------------------
map global git g     ':magit-status<ret>'                  -docstring 'magit status'
map global git l     ':magit-log<ret>'                     -docstring 'log'
map global git L     ':magit-reflog<ret>'                  -docstring 'HEAD reflog'
map global git b     ':magit-branch-dispatch<ret>'         -docstring 'branches buffer'

# --- Buffer-local operations (gutter, blame, hunk nav, stage-selection) -
map global git n     ':magit-next-hunk<ret>'               -docstring 'next hunk'
map global git p     ':magit-prev-hunk<ret>'               -docstring 'previous hunk'
map global git m     ':magit-blame-toggle<ret>'            -docstring 'toggle blame'
map global git s     ':magit-stage-selection<ret>'         -docstring 'stage selection'
map global git u     ':magit-unstage-selection<ret>'       -docstring 'unstage selection'
map global git <ret> ':magit-log-line<ret>'                -docstring 'commit for current line'

# --- Diff -----------------------------------------------------------------
map global git d     ':magit-diff-dispatch<ret>'           -docstring 'diff (menu)'
map global git D     ':magit-diff-staged<ret>'             -docstring 'diff staged preview'
map global git "'"   ':magit-diff-dwim<ret>'               -docstring 'diff (context-aware)'

# --- Commit + sequence verbs ---------------------------------------------
map global git c     ':magit-commit-dispatch<ret>'         -docstring 'commit transient'
map global git P     ':magit-push-transient<ret>'          -docstring 'push transient'
map global git F     ':magit-fetch-transient<ret>'         -docstring 'fetch transient'
map global git f     ':magit-pull-transient<ret>'          -docstring 'pull transient'
map global git M     ':magit-merge-transient<ret>'         -docstring 'merge transient'
map global git A     ':magit-cherry-transient<ret>'        -docstring 'cherry-pick transient'
map global git V     ':magit-revert-transient<ret>'        -docstring 'revert transient'
map global git r     ':magit-rebase-transient<ret>'        -docstring 'rebase transient'

# --- Repo-scoped transients ----------------------------------------------
map global git t     ':magit-tag-transient<ret>'           -docstring 'tag transient'
map global git X     ':magit-reset-transient<ret>'         -docstring 'reset transient'
map global git e     ':magit-remote-transient<ret>'        -docstring 'remote transient'
map global git z     ':magit-stash-transient<ret>'         -docstring 'stash (create) transient'
map global git w     ':magit-worktree-dispatch<ret>'       -docstring 'worktree transient'
map global git o     ':magit-submodule-dispatch<ret>'      -docstring 'submodule transient'
map global git i     ':magit-bisect-dispatch<ret>'         -docstring 'bisect transient'
map global git C     ':magit-clone-dispatch<ret>'          -docstring 'clone transient'
map global git I     ':magit-gitignore-dispatch<ret>'      -docstring 'gitignore transient'
map global git N     ':magit-patch-dispatch<ret>'          -docstring 'patch transient (create/apply/am)'

# --- Working-tree helpers -------------------------------------------------
map global git x     ':enter-user-mode magit-conflict<ret>' -docstring 'conflict resolve'
map global git .     ':magit-file-dispatch<ret>'           -docstring 'file dispatch (this file)'
map global git W     ':magit-wip-toggle<ret>'              -docstring 'toggle WIP auto-snapshot'

declare-user-mode magit-conflict
map global magit-conflict n ': magit-conflict-next<ret>'   -docstring 'next conflict'
map global magit-conflict p ': magit-conflict-prev<ret>'   -docstring 'previous conflict'
map global magit-conflict o ': magit-conflict-ours<ret>'   -docstring 'keep ours'
map global magit-conflict t ': magit-conflict-theirs<ret>' -docstring 'keep theirs'
map global magit-conflict b ': magit-conflict-both<ret>'   -docstring 'keep both'

Quick start

After install:

1. Open kakoune inside a git worktree.
2. Press <space>g g → *magit-status* opens.
3. Press <space>g (and hold) to see every binding in autoinfo.

Keybinding cheatsheet (the suggested keymap above)

All under the <space>g user-mode.

Key	Action
g	magit status
l / L	log / reflog
b	branches buffer
d / D / '	diff (menu / staged / context-aware)
c	commit transient
P / F / f	push / fetch / pull
M / A / V / r	merge / cherry-pick / revert / rebase
t / X / e / z	tag / reset / remote / stash
w / o / i	worktree / submodule / bisect
C / I / N	clone / gitignore / patch
x	conflict resolve
.	file dispatch (current buffer)
m	toggle blame
s / u	stage / unstage selection
n / p	next / previous hunk
W	toggle WIP auto-snapshot
<ret>	commit for current line

Inside *magit-status*: s/u stage/unstage at cursor, <a-k>/K discard, <tab> fold, t section-jump menu, V reverse to worktree.

Inside *magit-log*: <ret> view commit, O log another ref, T filter, ~ toggle margin, V revert at cursor.

Inside blame overlay: s cycle display style, B recursive blame, <ret> jump to commit.

Press ? inside any magit buffer to see an autoinfo listing of every buffer-local binding with its docstring — no need to memorize.

Full details: see each module's header comment under rc/.

Startup cost

magit.kak adds effectively nothing to Kakoune startup. The transient engine (magit-transients, the one heavy module) is lazy-loaded — it is required on the first push / pull / fetch / merge / cherry-pick / revert / rebase / tag / reset / remote / stash transient (or first diff/log/commit transient), then stays loaded for the rest of the session. The first such command therefore pays a one-time ~250 ms load; everything else, including *magit-status*, is available immediately at launch.

Recommended kakoune settings

Enable autoreload so file buffers refresh automatically when magit operations (rebase / stash apply / revert / reset) mutate the worktree:

set-option global autoreload true

Without this, kakoune warns "file changed on disk" on the next keystroke in any affected buffer; you then must :edit! to reload.

Hunk indicator (diff gutter)

magit.kak shows a per-line VCS gutter (added / modified / deleted markers, diffed against HEAD) in every tracked-file buffer automatically — no keymap or setup required. It installs four global hooks under the magit-gutter group:

Hook	Effect
WinDisplay	show + populate the gutter when a buffer is first displayed
FocusIn	refresh on window focus
BufReload	refresh after an external reload
BufWritePost	refresh after save

The check for "is this a tracked file in a git repo" lives inside magit-gutter-update, so the hooks are safe on scratch / non-git buffers (they no-op). Markers are colored with kakoune's built-in faces: green added, blue modified, red deleted.

Customize the marker glyphs (defaults shown):

set-option global magit_gutter_add_char '▏'   # added lines
set-option global magit_gutter_mod_char '▏'   # modified lines
set-option global magit_gutter_del_char '_'   # deleted lines
set-option global magit_gutter_top_char '‾'   # deletion at top of file

Control it manually:

• magit-gutter-hide / magit-gutter-show — toggle for the current buffer.
• magit-gutter-update — force a refresh.
• magit-next-hunk / magit-prev-hunk — jump between changed hunks (bound to <space>g n / <space>g p in the suggested keymap).
• To disable the auto-gutter entirely, remove the hook group after load: remove-hooks global magit-gutter.

What's shipped

33/51 Magit 4.5.0 transients implemented, plus:

• Status buffer with full sectioning + folding + section-jump menu.
• Commit transient with extend / amend / reword / fixup / squash / instant-fixup / instant-squash.
• Interactive rebase with reword batching (single-buffer edit of N messages) and edit-verb pause/continue.
• Blame overlay with recursive walk, blob blame from show buffer, style cycle.
• Merge preview / nocommit / editmsg variants.
• Log with graph, SHA linemap, filters, other-ref prompt, author+age margin.
• Stash section + create transient with --include-untracked / --all / --keep-index / --staged / branch-from-stash.
• Worktree + submodule + bisect transients, each with a status-buffer section.
• WIP auto-snapshots to refs/wip/wtree/<branch> on every save.
• 2-way and diff3 conflict-marker helpers.
• Patch transient (format-patch / apply / am with --continue/--abort).
• Clone transient (regular / shallow / bare / mirror / sparse).
• Gitignore transient (top / subdir / .git/info/exclude) with pre-fill.

What's NOT shipped (intentional)

• magit-dispatch popup — kakoune's built-in user-mode autoinfo covers it.
• Ediff — replaced by <space>g x conflict helpers.
• Dired / bookmark / autorevert — Emacs-specific.
• Subtree / bundle / notes / sparse-checkout standalone / list-repositories / absorb / request-pull — niche; open an issue if you need one.

Credits

• Magit by Jonas Bernoulli and contributors — the reference design.
• Kakoune community for provide-module, flag-lines, transient-as-user-mode, and %sh{} patterns that make this possible in ~4k lines of kakscript.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.