Riftri

Safety

Keep important work committed or backed up. Copy-on-write isolates file changes; it is not a security sandbox.

View .md / Copy .md

Riftri deletes directories and, on Linux, can install a root-owned mount helper, so it is built to refuse rather than guess. When an operation cannot be performed safely and exactly, it stops with an explanation instead of degrading to something approximate.

What Riftri protects

  • Unsupported storage or checkout stops creation — no silent full-copy fallback. Sparse checkout, submodules, custom filters, and non-canonical Git LFS setups are refused before any state exists.
  • Normal removal refuses local changes; forced removal is an explicit discard that records an exact content snapshot first and stops if the worktree changed after that intent.
  • Lifecycle operations are recorded for recovery after an interruption, so a killed process leaves a resumable journal rather than half-made state.
  • Cleanup preserves changed or ambiguous paths; shared bases are collected only when unreferenced.
  • Immutable bases are read-only, so a stray delete fails instead of quietly succeeding.

Verified on real filesystems

Copy-on-write cannot be tested where it does not exist. CI builds a disposable real volume per backend — an APFS image on macOS, loop-mounted Btrfs and reflink XFS on Linux, a ReFS VHDX on Windows — and runs the lifecycle and crash-recovery suites there, rather than on a runner's default filesystem where only the refusal paths would ever execute.

What you control

  • Use Riftri's lifecycle commands; never delete or edit its internal state directories.
  • Review riftri gc before riftri gc --apply. Destructive commands confirm on a terminal; --yes skips that for scripts.
  • Interception is opt-in per repository and per shell or process; your shell profile is never edited.
  • The Linux OverlayFS helper needs a separate administrator installation.

If something goes wrong

riftri status

Follow its recovery guidance, keeping any custom repository or state-directory arguments; see troubleshooting. Report potential data-loss or security problems privately via the security policy.

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