stakk

stakk bridges Jujutsu bookmarks to GitHub stacked pull requests.

It is not a jj wrapper. It complements jj by reading your local bookmark state and turning it into a coherent set of GitHub PRs that merge into each other in the correct order — with stack-awareness comments, correct base branches, and idempotent updates.

Features

• Automatic stack detection — analyzes the jj change graph to find bookmark chains and their topological order.
• Stacked PR submission — creates or updates GitHub PRs with correct base branches so each PR shows only its own diff.
• Stack-awareness comments — adds a comment to every PR listing the full stack with links, updated in place on re-runs.
• Idempotent — re-running stakk submit is always safe. Existing PRs are updated, never duplicated.
• Dry-run mode — --dry-run shows exactly what would happen without touching GitHub.
• Interactive selection — running stakk submit without a bookmark argument shows an interactive two-stage prompt: pick a stack, then pick how far up the stack to submit. Shared ancestors are annotated, and each option shows the resulting PR count.
• Draft PRs — --draft creates new PRs as drafts.
• PR body from descriptions — PR titles and bodies are populated from jj change descriptions. Manually edited PR bodies are never overwritten.
• No direct git usage — all VCS operations go through jj commands, so workspaces and non-colocated repos work automatically.
• Forge-agnostic core — GitHub is the first implementation, but the submission logic is decoupled behind a Forge trait.

Origins

stakk is inspired by jj-stack, a TypeScript/ReScript CLI that does the same job. jj-stack's core algorithms — change graph construction, segment grouping, topological ordering — directly informed stakk's design.

stakk reimplements these ideas in Rust to continue the development of these ideas, as well as to address new features and desired changes.

Installation

mise (recommended)

mise use -g 'github:glennib/stakk'

Or from crates.io:

mise use -g 'cargo:stakk'

cargo-binstall

cargo binstall stakk

cargo install

cargo install stakk

Pre-built binaries

Download from the latest release.

Quick start

# Submit interactively — pick a stack and bookmark from a menu
stakk

# Submit a specific bookmark (and its ancestors) as stacked PRs
stakk submit my-feature

# Preview what would happen without doing anything
stakk submit my-feature --dry-run

# Create PRs as drafts
stakk submit my-feature --draft

# See your bookmark stacks without submitting
stakk show

How stacking works

In jj, you create bookmarks that point at changes. When bookmarks form a linear chain — each building on the previous — they represent a stack:

trunk
  └── feat-auth        ← bookmark 1
        └── feat-api   ← bookmark 2
              └── feat-ui  ← bookmark 3

When you run stakk submit feat-ui, stakk:

1. Analyzes the change graph to find the stack containing feat-ui and all its ancestors (feat-auth, feat-api, feat-ui).
2. Plans the submission by checking GitHub for existing PRs, determining which bookmarks need pushing, which PRs need creating, and which base branches need updating.
3. Executes the plan: pushes bookmarks, creates or updates PRs with correct base branches, and adds stack-awareness comments to every PR.

The result on GitHub:

• feat-auth → PR targeting main
• feat-api → PR targeting feat-auth
• feat-ui → PR targeting feat-api

Each PR shows only its own diff, and a stack comment on every PR links all related PRs together:

Re-running stakk submit is always safe — it updates existing PRs rather than creating duplicates.

Usage

stakk (no arguments)

Launches the interactive submission flow with a two-stage prompt: pick a stack, then choose how far up the stack to submit. This is equivalent to stakk submit without arguments.

stakk submit [bookmark]

Submit a bookmark and all its ancestors as stacked PRs. When run without a bookmark argument, an interactive two-stage prompt lets you pick a stack and then choose how far up the stack to submit:

? Which stack?
> ○ ← base ← feat-b ← feat-c  (3 PRs)
  ○ ← standalone  (1 PR: fix login bug)

? Submit up to which bookmark?
> feat-c (leaf, 1 commit) → 3 PRs
      add caching layer
  feat-b (2 commits) → 2 PRs
      refactor auth module
  base (base, 1 commit) → 1 PR
      add user model

Stages are skipped automatically when there's only one option (e.g., a single stack skips stage 1, a single bookmark auto-selects immediately).

PR titles come from the first line of the jj change description. PR bodies are populated from the full description (everything after the title line). For segments with multiple commits, descriptions are joined with --- separators. Bodies are only set on PR creation — manually edited PR bodies are never overwritten.

stakk show

Display repository status and all bookmark stacks without submitting.

Shows the default branch, remotes, and all bookmark stacks with their commit summaries and PR counts:

Default branch: main
Remote: origin git@github.com:you/repo.git (you/repo)

Stacks (3 found):
  Stack 1:
    feature-auth (1 commit(s)): feat: add authentication
    feature-api (2 commit(s)): feat: add API endpoints
  Stack 2:
    feature-ui (1 commit(s)): feat: add UI layer
  Stack 3:
    feature-tests (1 commit(s)): test: add integration tests

stakk completions <shell>

Generate shell completions. Supported shells: bash, zsh, fish, elvish, powershell.

# Zsh — add to your fpath
stakk completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_stakk

# Bash
stakk completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/stakk

# Fish
stakk completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/stakk.fish

stakk auth test

Validate that GitHub authentication is working and print the authenticated username.

stakk auth setup

Print instructions for setting up authentication. stakk resolves a GitHub token in this order:

1. GitHub CLI (gh auth token) — recommended
2. GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable
3. GH_TOKEN environment variable

Design

stakk never calls git directly. All git operations go through jj subcommands (jj git push, jj git remote list, etc.). This means stakk works automatically in jj workspaces and non-colocated repositories — two cases where calling git directly fails.

All forge interaction goes through a Forge trait. GitHub is the first (and currently only) implementation, but the core submission logic is forge-agnostic. This opens the door to Forgejo, GitLab, or other platforms in the future.

The submission pipeline is split into three phases:

• Analyze — pure function, no I/O, fully testable with mock data
• Plan — queries the forge for existing PRs, determines actions
• Execute — pushes bookmarks, creates/updates PRs, manages comments

This separation makes the business logic testable without hitting real APIs, and --dry-run falls out naturally (run phases 1 and 2, skip 3).

License

MIT