livediff

livediff [-c | --compact] [-h | --help]

livediff watches the Git work tree of the current directory and prints a unified diff for every file that changes after it starts. Edits from a coding agent, an editor, or any other process show up the same way: added lines in green, removed lines in red, with three lines of context in the default view. Each change is shown once, as a streaming feed rather than a full-screen TUI.At startup it records the contents of every path returned by `git ls-files --cached --others --exclude-standard` (tracked files and untracked files that are not ignored). It then polls that list every 200 milliseconds, comparing size, mtime, and bytes. New files, deletions, and content edits each produce a diff; binary files (NUL in the first 8 KiB) are reported as changed without a text hunk. Only edits that happen after livediff is running appear: the initial snapshot is silent.The current directory must be inside a Git work tree (`git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree`). Git itself is the only runtime dependency.

-c, --compact

Print only the path, a timestamp, and the added or removed lines. Omits the `diff --git` header, `---`/`+++` paths, hunk headers, and unchanged context.

Print usage and exit.

When stdin is a terminal, livediff puts it in raw mode so single keypresses are read immediately.q or Ctrl-C

Stop watching and exit.

Clear the terminal (CSI erase display and home cursor).

NO_COLOR

When set to any non-empty value, ANSI color codes are omitted. Color is also off when stdout is not a terminal.

The command name livediff is also used by an unrelated Rust TUI (`cargo install livediff`, Homebrew tap `socket7/tap/livediff`) that takes a path argument and opens a full-screen viewer. This page documents the Go streaming CLI from stagas.livediff polls on a 200 ms timer; it does not use inotify or FSEvents. Very large work trees keep file contents in memory. Ignored paths, and files that are neither tracked nor untracked-but-not-ignored, are never shown. Changes made before the process starts are not replayed.

livediff is a small Go program by stagas, released under the MIT License in 2026.

git-diff(1), git(1), gitwatch(1), watch(1), delta(1), diff(1)

Source code