commit	a347b1750551dd2d95e478eb0cf2b27f8c547379	[log] [tgz]
author	Philip Zeyliger <philip@bold.dev>	Wed Jun 04 16:18:57 2025 +0000
committer	Philip Zeyliger <philip@bold.dev>	Wed Jun 04 16:20:26 2025 +0000
tree	6ab53e5d5550e8b049c4f3582bfb04acba369580
parent	7a852353fbfda90b45e0e0e774f1e6132dc7053c [diff]

cmd/sketch: remove -initial-commit flag configuration option

Remove the -initial-commit command-line flag to simplify the CLI interface
while preserving all internal agent functionality for tracking the initial
commit baseline through the existing SketchGitBase system.

Problem Analysis:
The -initial-commit flag allowed users to specify a different git commit
reference as the starting point for Sketch operations. This added complexity
to the command-line interface and created an incompatibility with the -unsafe
flag. Analysis showed that most users would use the default HEAD value, making
the flag unnecessary complexity.

Implementation Changes:

1. Command Line Interface:
   - Removed -initial-commit flag definition from main.go
   - Removed CLI flag struct field and validation logic
   - Eliminated incompatibility check with -unsafe flag
   - Cleaned up flag parsing to remove unused initialCommit field

2. Container Configuration:
   - Removed InitialCommit field from dockerimg.ContainerConfig struct
   - Updated git commit resolution to use "HEAD" directly instead of flag value
   - Simplified container launch process by removing flag passthrough

3. Preserved Agent Functionality:
   - Maintained all SketchGitBase and SketchGitBaseRef methods unchanged
   - Preserved initial_commit field in server state and web UI for agent tracking
   - Kept all git diff, log, and baseline functionality intact
   - Agent continues to establish and track its own initial commit baseline

Technical Details:
- The agent's internal initial commit tracking remains fully functional
- Git operations continue to work with the sketch-base tag system
- Agent initialization still establishes proper git baseline using HEAD
- All existing git diff and log functionality preserved
- Container and unsafe modes both default to current HEAD commit
- Web UI continues to display the agent's tracked initial commit

Testing:
- All Go package tests pass (loop/server, dockerimg)
- Command-line flag parsing works correctly without -initial-commit
- Basic sketch startup functionality verified in both safe and unsafe modes
- Agent git operations and baseline tracking remain intact

Benefits:
- Simplified command-line interface with fewer flags to understand
- Removed artificial incompatibility between -initial-commit and -unsafe
- Reduced cognitive load for new users learning sketch CLI options
- Cleaner container configuration with less conditional logic
- Maintained all essential agent functionality while removing user complexity

This change removes only the user-facing configurability while preserving
all internal git tracking and baseline functionality that the agent relies on.

Co-Authored-By: sketch <hello@sketch.dev>
Change-ID: s962b916b2d3b6582k

2 files changed

tree: 6ab53e5d5550e8b049c4f3582bfb04acba369580

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

go install sketch.dev/cmd/sketch@latest
sketch

🔧 Requirements

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

Platform	Installation
macOS	`brew install colima` (or Docker Desktop/Orbstack)
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!)