gitwink — a read-only tray git glance for the AI-agent era

A developer built gitwink, a read-only tray application for quickly glancing at git history without launching a full IDE. Designed for the AI-agent era, the tool lets users view commits, diffs, and branch graphs from the system tray, with a "Copy as AI context" feature to paste into coding agents like Claude or Cursor. Gitwink is available on the Microsoft Store, via WinGet, Scoop, or direct GitHub release, and includes no telemetry or phone-home functionality.

I used to live in VS Code with GitLens pinned — the branch graph, heat-mapped blame, the lens annotations. That was my git workflow. Then 2026 happened. With Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex doing the actual editing, the editor itself became optional. The only thing dragging me back was GitLens. That felt wasteful — booting an entire IDE just to peek at commit history. The agent runs the git commands now; I only need to sanity-check the result, occasionally, when something looks off. So I built gitwink — the smallest possible tool for Read-only by design. It cannot commit, push, merge, or modify anything. If I need git surgery, I tell the agent. agent commits → tray click → inline expand → "Copy as AI context" → paste into Claude/Codex/Cursor → "did the agent do this right?" No window switching. No IDE boot. The whole loop fits inside a glance. Ctrl+Shift+G to summon from anywhere. Right-click the tray icon for Reset position / Open settings file / Quit. source , Documents , Projects , Code , Dev , repos , Desktop , every non-system drive on Windows; ~/Projects , ~/Code , ~/Developer on macOS and caches the result in SQLite. No "add repo" friction. ● commit · ◆ merge · ★ tagged — and branch label badges when a commit isn't on the currently checked-out branch. +/− line counts, bin + size for binaries, GitLens-style filename emphasis. c key or button. Produces a markdown block with the commit, file list, and if small enough the full diff, ready to paste into Claude / Codex / Cursor.For the "wait, did the agent actually do that?" moments. Click any commit and a separate window opens — full file sidebar, side-by-side diff with synchronised scroll, inline image preview for binary assets, and a singleton that remembers position, size, and maximised state. git2 No telemetry. No phone-home. The only network access is an opt-out update check. Microsoft Store — gitwink on the Microsoft Store → https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P0S21GJD53F . The Store build is signed by Microsoft during certification, so no SmartScreen prompt appears, and the Store owns updates. WinGet: winget install gitwink Scoop: scoop bucket add var-gg https://github.com/var-gg/scoop-bucket scoop install gitwink Scoop installs by extraction, so no SmartScreen prompt either. Update later with scoop update gitwink . Or grab the release directly — latest release on GitHub https://github.com/var-gg/gitwink/releases/latest : .exe NSIS installer or .msi .dmg universal Direct downloads are currently unsigned gitwink participates in the SignPath Foundation https://signpath.org/ free code-signing program for OSS; the certificate will sign these artefacts once approved . The release notes have the SmartScreen / Gatekeeper bypass steps. Building from source is straightforward — pnpm install && pnpm tauri dev . Requires Node 20+, Rust stable msvc toolchain on Windows , Visual C++ Build Tools or Xcode CLT. v0.4 — usable, daily-driven. Cold-start friendly tray app. Source on GitHub → https://github.com/var-gg/gitwink MIT licensed If the AI-agent workflow describes your week too, give it a wink. Feedback and issues welcome on GitHub https://github.com/var-gg/gitwink/issues .