commit	254c49faa2537d79e1394c4109f48a6e0990967c	[log] [tgz]
author	Philip Zeyliger <philip@bold.dev>	Thu Jul 17 17:26:24 2025 -0700
committer	Autoformatter <bot@sketch.dev>	Fri Jul 18 00:40:30 2025 +0000
tree	3b13d86f48e45846dc225ccd24253f5b0dca0398
parent	55b4ab50d0ee61e15825cb4254cfc63b8f5489bd [diff]

sketch: "git push" button

Ultimately, we want to allow users to push their changes to github, and
thereby do a good chunk of work without resorting to the terminal (and
figuring out how to move the git references around, which requires a
bunch of esotiric and annoying expertise).

This commit introduces:

1. For outtie's HTTP server (which is now comically Go HTTP ->
   CGI-effing-bin -> git -> shell script -> git in this case), there's a
   custom git hook that forwards changes to refs/remotes/origin/foo to
   origin/foo. This is a git proxy of sorts. By forwarding the
   SSH_AUTH_SOCK, we can use outtie's auth options without giving innie
   the actual credentials. This works by creating a temporary directory
   for git hooks (for outtie).

2. Innie sets up a new remote, "upstream" when a "passthrough-upstream"
   flag is pasksed. This remote kind of looks like the real upstream (so
   upstream/foo) is fetched. This will let the agent handle rebases
   better.

3. Innie exposes a /pushinfo handler that returns the list of remotes
   and the current commit and such. These have nice display names for
   the outtie's machine and github if useful.

   There's also a /push handler. This is the thing that knows about the
   refs/remotes/origin/foo thing. There's no magic git push refspec that
   makes this all work without that, I think. (Maybe there is? I don't
   think there is.)

   Note that there's been some changes about what the remotes look like,
   and when we use the remotes and when we use agent.GitOrigin().
   We may be able to simplify this by using git's insteadof
   configurations, but I think it's fine.

4. The web UI exposes a button to push, choose the remote and branch,
   and such. If it can't do the push, you'll get a button to try to get
   the agent to rebase.

   We don't allow force pushes in the UI. We're treating those
   as an advanced feature, and, if you need to do that, you can
   figure it out.

This was collaboration with a gazillion sketch sessions.

17 files changed

tree: 3b13d86f48e45846dc225ccd24253f5b0dca0398

README.md

Sketch

Sketch is an agentic coding tool. It draws the 🦉

🚀 Overview

Sketch runs in your terminal, has a web UI, understands your code, and helps you get work done. To keep your environment pristine, sketch starts a docker container and outputs its work onto a branch in your host git repository.

Sketch helps with most programming environments, but Sketch has extra goodies for Go.

📋 Quick Start

Install via GitHub Releases

Grab the most recent nightly release.

Update by running sketch -update.

Build from source

Clone this repo, and then run:

$ make
$ ./sketch

🔧 Requirements

Currently, Sketch runs on MacOS and Linux. It uses Docker for containers.

Platform	Installation
MacOS	`brew install colima` (or OrbStack or Docker Desktop)
Linux	`apt install docker.io` (or equivalent for your distro)
WSL2	Install Docker Desktop for Windows (docker entirely inside WSL2 is tricky)

The sketch.dev service is used to provide access to an LLM service and give you a way to access the web UI from anywhere.

🤝 Community & Feedback

Discord: Join our community at https://discord.gg/6w9qNRUDzS
GitHub Issues: Submit feedback at https://github.com/boldsoftware/sketch/issues

📖 User Guide

Getting Started

Start Sketch by running sketch in a Git repository. It will open your browser to the Sketch chat interface, but you can also use the CLI interface. Use -open=false if you want to use just the CLI interface.

Ask Sketch about your codebase or ask it to implement a feature. It may take a little while for Sketch to do its work, so hit the bell (🔔) icon to enable browser notifications. We won't spam you or anything; it will notify you when the Sketch agent's turn is done, and there's something to look at.

How Sketch Works

When you start Sketch, it:

Creates a Dockerfile
Builds it
Copies your repository into it
Starts a Docker container with the "inside" Sketch running

This design lets you run multiple sketches in parallel since they each have their own sandbox. It also lets Sketch work without worry: it can trash its own container, but it can't trash your machine.

Sketch's agentic loop uses tool calls (mostly shell commands, but also a handful of other important tools) to allow the LLM to interact with your codebase.

Getting Your Git Changes Out

Sketch is trained to make Git commits. When those happen, they are automatically pushed to the git repository where you started sketch with branch names sketch/*.

Finding Sketch branches:

git branch -a --sort=creatordate | grep sketch/ | tail

The UI keeps track of the latest branch it pushed and displays it prominently. You can use standard Git workflows to pull those branches into your workspace:

git cherry-pick $(git merge-base origin/main sketch/foo)

or merge the branch

git merge sketch/foo

or reset to the branch

git reset --hard sketch/foo

Ie use the same workflows you would if you were pulling in a friend's Pull Request.

Advanced: You can ask Sketch to git fetch sketch-host and rebase onto another commit. This will also fetch where you started Sketch, and we do a bit of "git fetch refspec configuration" to make origin/main work as a git reference.

Don't be afraid of asking Sketch to help you rebase, merge/squash commits, rewrite commit messages, and so forth; it's good at it!

Reviewing Diffs

The diff view shows you changes since Sketch started. Leaving comments on lines adds them to the chat box, and, when you hit Send (at the bottom of the page), Sketch goes to work addressing your comments.

Connecting to Sketch's Container

You can interact directly with the container in three ways:

Web UI Terminal: Use the "Terminal" tab in the UI
SSH: Look at the startup logs or click the information icon to see a command like ssh sketch-ilik-eske-tcha-lott. We have automatically configured your SSH configuration to make these special hostnames work.
Visual Studio Code: Look for a command line or magic link behind the information icon, or when Sketch starts up. This starts a new VSCode session "remoted into" the container. You can edit the code, use the terminal, review diffs, and so forth.

Using SSH (and/or VSCode) allows you to forward ports from the container to your machine. For example, if you want to start your development webserver, you can do something like this:

# Forward container port 8888 to local port 8000
ssh -L8000:localhost:8888 sketch-ilik-epor-tfor-ward go run ./cmd/server

This makes http://localhost:8000/ on your machine point to localhost:8888 inside the container.

Using Browser Tools

You can ask Sketch to browse a web page and take screenshots. There are tools both for taking screenshots and "reading images", the latter of which sends the image to the LLM. This functionality is handy if you're working on a web page and want to see what the in-progress change looks like.

❓ FAQ

"No space left on device"

Docker images, containers, and so forth tend to pile up. Ask Docker to prune unused images and containers:

docker system prune -a

🛠️ Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development guidelines.

📄 Open Source

Sketch is open source. It is right here in this repository! Have a look around and mod away.

If you want to run Sketch entirely without the sketch.dev service, you can set the flag -skaband-addr="" and then provide an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable. (More LLM services coming soon!)