livediff

Stay on top of what your coding agents are doing with a live diff feed, right in your terminal.

livediff watches the current Git repository and shows every edit as it happens, whether it comes from an agent, an editor, or another tool. Changes appear like a regular Git diff: added lines are green, removed lines are red, and unchanged lines provide context. Each edit is shown once, keeping the feed focused on what your agents are changing now.

Install

Run this in your terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stagas/livediff/main/install.sh | sh

The installer supports Linux and macOS on x64 or ARM64, and Windows x64 through Git Bash. It downloads a standalone executable; only Git needs to be installed.

Get started

Open a terminal in any Git repository and run:

livediff

Now edit and save a file. You will see output similar to:

diff --git a/example.ts b/example.ts 3:47:12 PM
--- a/example.ts
+++ b/example.ts
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
-const greeting = "Hello";
+const greeting = "Hello, world!";

Only edits made after livediff starts are displayed. It watches tracked files and new files that are not excluded by your Git ignore rules.

Press q or Ctrl-C to stop.

Compact mode

For a quieter view with only the filename, time, and changed lines, run:

livediff --compact

The short form works too:

livediff -c

Compact output looks like this:

example.ts 3:47:12 PM
-const greeting = "Hello";
+const greeting = "Hello, world!";

Color and install location

Disable colors when redirecting output or using a terminal without color support:

NO_COLOR=1 livediff

The installer uses /usr/local/bin when it is writable and ~/.local/bin otherwise. To choose a different directory:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stagas/livediff/main/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/bin" sh

Release checksums are available as SHA256SUMS on the GitHub Releases page.

Development

The project uses Go. To test or compile it from source:

go test ./...
go build -o dist/livediff .

License

MIT © 2026 stagas