DESIGN.md

Design

Workspace architecture

Grove stores Git data in a bare repository (.bare) with worktrees as sibling directories:

project/
├── .bare/           # Bare Git repository (objects, refs)
├── .git             # File: "gitdir: .bare"
├── main/            # Worktree for main branch
├── feature-auth/    # Worktree for feature/auth
└── bugfix-login/    # Worktree for bugfix/login

• .bare holds the complete Git repository without a working tree
• .git file redirects Git operations to .bare
• Worktree directories contain isolated working copies
• Branch names like feature/auth become feature-auth

Grove finds workspaces by traversing parent directories for .bare or .git files containing gitdir: .bare.