Avi

Avi is a SwiftUI-based macOS git client. It focuses on local-first workflows (staging, committing, browsing history) and adds an AI-assisted commit message generator alongside lightweight GitHub and GitLab integration.

Status

Alpha. Avi has not had a public release yet; v0.1.0 is the first tagged build. Expect rough edges, especially around provider authentication, OAuth, and multi-account flows.

Features

• Tab-based repository view with status bar, branch info, and remote actions.
• Staged / unstaged file lists in Fork-style ordering, with selection-preserving stage and unstage operations.
• Commit graph view with per-commit file diffs.
• Changed-files tree that defaults to fully expanded, with expand-all and collapse-all controls.
• AI-assisted commit message generation through a configurable command or the OpenAI API, with an IDE-style debug drawer for the underlying run.
• Config file with live reload; secrets stored in the macOS Keychain.
• Repository picker with search, lazy metadata hydration, and clone-from-provider.
• GitHub / GitLab account management with Personal Access Tokens and gh / glab CLI integration.

Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon.
• Swift 6.2 toolchain (Xcode 16 or a recent Swift release).
• Optional CLI tools used by some features: git (required), gh, glab, codex, claude. Configure paths in Settings → External Tools.

Build & Run

# Build everything (library + executable):
swift build

# Run the unit and snapshot tests:
swift test

# Launch the app in development:
swift run AviApp

If your installed Command Line Tools cannot link the SwiftPM manifest (a known issue on stock toolchains without full Xcode), the repo ships a fallback build script that bypasses swift build:

./build.sh         # builds GitKit + AppUI + AviApp into .build/manual/
./build.sh run     # build + launch

Tagged releases are built locally on a Mac with swift build -c release and packaged by scripts/package-app.sh. See docs/RELEASE.md for the full runbook.

Configuration

The config file lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Avi/config.toml. It is created automatically on first launch with defaults. See docs/CONFIGURATION.md for the full schema and config.example.toml for a complete example.

Tokens (GitHub / GitLab PATs, AI provider API keys) are stored in the macOS Keychain (service com.avi) and are never written to the config file.

Releases

Tagged releases ship a zipped Avi.app bundle and a SHA256SUMS file on the GitHub Releases page. Artifact names follow the pattern avi-<version>-macos-arm64.zip.

Verify a download with:

shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS

The bundle is ad-hoc signed, not notarized with a Developer ID. The first time you launch the downloaded Avi.app, macOS Gatekeeper will refuse to open it; right-click the app in Finder and pick Open, then click Open in the warning sheet. Subsequent launches work normally.

See docs/RELEASE.md for the maintainer's release checklist.

License

Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.