# git_panel
**Status:** Shipped — the Git Panel is the **Git → Changes…** panel (see
`git-integration.md`). Open it from the **Git** menu, the command palette
("Git: Changes"), or by **clicking the branch indicator in the status bar**.
The Git Panel shows the state of your working tree and Git's staging area.
In the panel you can see the state of your workspace at a glance: the active branch
(shown in the panel title and the status bar), which files have changed, and the
current staging state of each file (a `[✓]` checkbox plus the M/A/?/D/R/U change
letter). Stage/unstage with `Space`/`s`/`u`, commit with `c`, refresh with `r`.
Vix re-reads `git status` on open, after each save, and after every git action,
so changes you make on the command line are reflected (press `r` to refresh on
demand).
## Smart commit (T577)
When nothing is staged but the working tree has changes, `c` consults the `smart_commit` setting: `"ask"` (default) shows a yes/no confirm that runs `git add -A` and then opens the commit prompt; `"always"` stages everything without asking; `"never"` keeps the old "nothing staged" refusal. A clean tree always refuses.