Commands

Commands answer the question “What do I want to do?” Jutsu groups every jj command into a category, and some commands expose further subcommands.

Command Categories

Jutsu groups Jujutsu commands into eight logical categories, structured roughly by their “blast radius”—starting from read-only inspection tools, moving to local work-copy mutations, history rewrites, remote synchronization, and administrative operations:

• View 🔍 — Read-only inspection (log, diff, status, file browsing, repository root, bisect). Most of these commands are non-mutating, though bisect run evaluates revisions by editing the working copy to each candidate revision in turn as part of the search, so it can change your working-copy selection.
• Change ✏️ — Actions targeting the current working-copy commit @ (e.g., descriptions, editing, untracking).
• Rewrite ⚙️ — Restructuring existing commit history (splitting, squashing, rebasing, abandoning commits).
• Sync 🔄 — Synchronizing and exchanging commits with Git remotes (git push/fetch, tracking bookmarks, tagging).
• Journal 📖 — Operations log and recovery (viewing undo logs, replaying or reverting transaction states).
• Navigate 🧭 — Changing the checkout target (@) without rewriting commits (edit, next, prev).
• Tools 🛠️ — Miscellaneous utilities (signing commits, managing sparse checkouts, batch scripting, auto-completion, help).
• Setup 📦 — Initialization and configuration (git init/git clone setups, workspace managers, config keys).

Selecting a Command and Subcommand

1. Highlighting a Category populates the Commands pane with the specific jj commands available under it.
2. Highlighting a Command populates the Sub-cmds pane with any nested subcommands (e.g., git fetch, bookmark list) for that command.
3. If a command has no subcommands, moving focus right automatically skips the empty Sub-cmds pane and lands on Flags — see Navigation for the horizontal movement keys.
4. Whichever command, subcommand, or flag is currently highlighted has its official description and help text shown live in the Docs Pane.

The Command-Preview Mental Model

As you select a category, command, and subcommand, the Command Bar at the bottom of the screen updates in real time to reflect the jj invocation being built — for example, selecting log under View immediately shows jj log in the preview, before any flags or inputs are added. This lets you see exactly what will run at every stage of composition, rather than guessing at syntax.

Related Topics

• Flags — how flags attach to the selected command.
• Inputs — how argument values attach to the selected command or its flags.
• Composing a Command — a full walkthrough from category selection to execution.