commit	be7802ab0605e7cf116d0979bda6e0b6af8f120d	[log] [tgz]
author	Philip Zeyliger <philip@bold.dev>	Wed Jun 04 20:15:25 2025 +0000
committer	Philip Zeyliger <philip@bold.dev>	Wed Jun 04 15:19:01 2025 -0700
tree	d9b2bc73b8bf5fcef160e83c10638b62bcc85863
parent	2abd467f1bd5fd5cc1de8719eb414a67a412f655 [diff]

loop: add configurable branch prefix option

Add -branch-prefix flag to customize git branch prefix instead of
hardcoded 'sketch/' for better integration with different workflows.

Problem Analysis:
The sketch system hardcoded 'sketch/' as the branch prefix throughout
the codebase, making it difficult for users who wanted different
branch naming conventions or needed to integrate with existing
development workflows that used different prefixes.

Implementation Changes:

1. CLI Flag Addition:
   - Added -branch-prefix flag to main.go with default 'sketch/'
   - Integrated flag into CLIFlags struct and argument parsing
   - Maintains backward compatibility with existing workflows

2. Configuration Threading:
   - Added BranchPrefix field to AgentConfig struct
   - Added BranchPrefix field to ContainerConfig struct
   - Modified container argument passing to include branch prefix
   - Set sensible default of 'sketch/' when not specified

3. Agent Implementation:
   - Added BranchPrefix() method to CodingAgent interface
   - Updated precommit tool to use configurable prefix
   - Modified git commit handling to use configurable prefix
   - Updated all hardcoded 'sketch/' references in logic

4. UI Integration:
   - Enhanced termui template to use configurable branch prefix
   - Added branch_prefix field to server State response
   - Updated webui TypeScript types via auto-generation
   - Modified sketch-tool-card to display configurable prefix

5. Container Integration:
   - Modified dockerimg to pass branch prefix to inner sketch
   - Updated container command arguments construction
   - Ensured proper flag threading through container boundary

Technical Details:
- Maintains full backward compatibility with existing usage
- Default behavior unchanged for existing users
- Type-safe implementation with proper error handling
- Clean interface design without type casts or fallbacks

Benefits:
- Enables custom branch naming conventions
- Better integration with team workflows
- Maintains existing sketch functionality
- Improves flexibility for different use cases

Testing:
- Verified default behavior remains unchanged
- Confirmed custom prefix works in both termui and webui
- All existing tests continue to pass
- Build verification successful across all components

This enhancement provides workflow flexibility while maintaining
the reliability and functionality of the existing branch management
system.

Co-Authored-By: sketch <hello@sketch.dev>
Change-ID: s71341dca2cfeeb24k

8 files changed

tree: d9b2bc73b8bf5fcef160e83c10638b62bcc85863

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!)