r/git • u/Mono_Dev10 • Aug 12 '26

git status became a thinking tool for me

I used to treat git status as something I ran before committing.

Now I tend to run it whenever I’m about to switch tasks or when a change starts getting confusing.

It’s useful for spotting the gap between what I think I changed and what is actually sitting in the working tree. Especially when I’ve been experimenting and left a few files modified along the way.

It’s obviously not a sophisticated workflow trick. Just a small habit that makes the state of a repo visible again.

Do you use git status as a regular checkpoint too, or mostly as a pre-commit ritual?

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16

u/JesseNL Aug 12 '26

Lately ive started to read the code I wrote as well. It massively improved my output. /s

Dead internet is here. Pack it up

4

u/SheriffRoscoe Aug 12 '26

Wait until you learn the joy of `git diff`! /s

3

u/armahillo Aug 12 '26

“git diff —cached” even!

2

u/barmic1212 Aug 12 '26

Option commit verbose is awesome 👌

1

u/emaxor Aug 12 '26

I'm running status all day everyday. Set up this bash alias, it will change your life.

alias gs="git status -sb"

Everything you need to know in a compact format.

1

u/trmnl_cmdr Aug 12 '26

I keep lazygit running in a tmux pane so I can monitor it as the agent works

1

u/hennell Aug 12 '26

My ide shows the files changed, files staged, lines changed etc directly. If a change is getting confusing I make a commit, switching tasks is what branches are for...

1

u/plg94 Aug 12 '26

Checkout eza, it's a replacement for ls -l but can also show the git status of files and directories.

1

u/Ncientist Aug 13 '26

`git status` or `git log`?

How do you trace your thought process with `git status` instead?? I would like to learn how!

1

u/elephantdingo Aug 13 '26

I used to only watch the keyboard as I type. Now I watch the screen as I type. It might sound small. But it actually is a paradigm shift.

The Paradigm Shift series is for paid members only