Local git

Status, diff, recent commits, branches and a commits-and-lines report for the git repository the workspace is in. Every command reads; none changes anything. Verification level: unit.

Supported versions: The oldest git version toil supports hasn’t been established. toil runs the git already on PATH and needs git 2.24 or later for its argument safeguards; an older one gets GIT_NOT_FOUND. Output parsing was checked against git 2.49.

Credential and configuration

None. There is no server, no connection to add, no TOIL_GIT_* variable and no --connection flag. The repository is the one the workspace (--workspace, else TOIL_WORKSPACE, else the working directory, else the MCP client’s single root) sits in; outside one, every command fails with Not a git repository (or GIT_NOT_FOUND, when there is no git either).

These are the only commands that need git installed. toil finds it on PATH itself, skipping relative entries and the working directory, and runs it with no shell, no pager, no prompts and none of your environment’s tokens. It also turns off what a repository’s config could make git run: external diff drivers, textconv filters, the fsmonitor hook and signature checks. Without git on PATH they fail with GIT_NOT_FOUND, naming the PATH searched; nothing else in toil is affected.

toil git current-pr is an alias of toil bitbucket pr current, which asks Bitbucket for the open pull request from the current branch (see bitbucket.md).

Commands

toil git status

git status --porcelain, as { staged, unstaged, untracked }: lists of paths relative to the repository root. A file with staged and unstaged changes is in both. A rename reads old -> new, and a path git quotes stays quoted. MCP tool: git_status.

toil git diff

The uncommitted changes, parsed. MCP tool: git_diff.

toil git diff
toil git diff --staged --file src/retry.ts

Output: { files: [{ path, binary, truncated, hunks: [{ oldStart, oldCount, newStart, newCount, lines }] }], truncated }. Parsing stops after 5,000 lines of git’s output, with truncated: true. A git that fails, or a diff over 1 MB, gives { files: [], truncated: false }.

toil git log

Recent commits, newest first: [{ hash, author, date, message }], date being the author date in ISO 8601 and message the subject line. MCP tool: git_log.

A git that fails (a --since it can’t read, an empty repository) gives [].

toil git branch

git branch -a, as { current, local, remote }, remote names without their remotes/ prefix (origin/main). Lines are kept as git prints them, so a branch checked out in another worktree reads + name, a detached HEAD is current as (HEAD detached at …), and origin/HEAD -> origin/main is a remote. MCP tool: git_branch.

toil git report

Commits, lines and files changed on a branch, from git log --numstat. MCP tool: git_report.

toil git report --since 2026-09-01
toil git report --base main --branch feature/retries --csv --out report.csv

Output: { branch, since, until, commits: [{ hash, date, author, message, filesChanged, insertions, deletions, netLines }], weeks: [{ week, weekStart, weekEnd, authors, summary }], byAuthor, summary: { commitCount, totalInsertions, totalDeletions, totalNetLines, totalFilesChanged } }, plus file (the CSV’s absolute path) with --csv. Weeks run Monday to Sunday in UTC and are labelled by ISO week (2026-W40). Absolute dates are applied again to each commit’s author date, since git’s own range walks by committer date. A binary file counts 0 lines. The CSV header is week,week_start,author,commits,insertions,deletions,net_lines,files_changed.

A misspelt branch or base, or a date git can’t read, gives an empty report.