Rift: Better Alternative to Git Worktrees

A new tool called Rift just strutted onto the scene promising a faster, cleaner way to spin up full copies of a coding project than Git worktrees, and the crowd reaction is exactly what you’d hope for: part applause, part side-eye, part "wait... what does this even do?" The pitch is flashy — near-instant copies, space-saving magic, Mac support, Linux support, command line speed, even a JavaScript tie-in for Bun and Node. In plain English, it’s selling developers the dream of making a whole new version of a project in seconds without duplicating everything.

But the real show is in the comments. One camp is already calling it a lifesaver. The thirst is real from people who’ve been desperately hunting for an easy way to jump between unrelated tasks in the same project without the usual mess. One commenter basically celebrated like they’d found buried treasure after being told by the internet this kind of thing was “Linux only.” Another immediately started asking for more: if this works with one file system, why not ZFS too?

Then came the backlash-lite. Several readers said the README was so stripped-down it became mysterious instead of helpful, with one person flatly asking: better in what way? Ouch. That’s the central drama here: Rift’s speed claims are exciting, but its explanation may be losing the crowd. And because it’s from the same team behind another tool, some are already gossiping about whether this is a replacement or the start of a mini tool-family feud.