Another commenter explained it: It's about working on multiple branches in parallel. You can only check out one branch at a time currently in git - but with "but" you have all the changes just in memory so different agents can work on different branches at the same time.
Working on multiple branches in parallel is literally what Git was created for, and how it's been used since the very first version 20 years ago.
Other commenters mentioned worktrees, which let you check out different branches at the same time from a single local repo. That's convenient, but not required.
Git always supported "fast cloning" local repos as well. You just "git clone" from one directory to another. Then they are independent and you're free to decide what to merge back.
These days, agents can also fork their containers or VMs as often as required too, with copy-on-write for speed.
So that's four ways to work on multiple branches in parallel using Git that we already use.
Another commenter explained it: It's about working on multiple branches in parallel. You can only check out one branch at a time currently in git - but with "but" you have all the changes just in memory so different agents can work on different branches at the same time.
Working on multiple branches in parallel is literally what Git was created for, and how it's been used since the very first version 20 years ago.
Other commenters mentioned worktrees, which let you check out different branches at the same time from a single local repo. That's convenient, but not required.
Git always supported "fast cloning" local repos as well. You just "git clone" from one directory to another. Then they are independent and you're free to decide what to merge back.
These days, agents can also fork their containers or VMs as often as required too, with copy-on-write for speed.
So that's four ways to work on multiple branches in parallel using Git that we already use.
git-worktree has been a thing for a decade+ and AI agents seem to be using them just fine in my experience. This is a solved problem.
That's not even true
Why not? Are you considering git worktrees?
Exactly, worktrees solve this problem, every "agentic IDE" uses them