A developer fantasy-spec for a better code forge: JJ as VCS, pre-commit remote CI, stacked PRs as first-class, Raspberry Pi-hostable, and offline-capable signed Actions.
Key Takeaways
Modern forges (GitHub, GitLab, Gitea) all clone GitHub’s pattern, layering forge features on top of git rather than rethinking the workflow.
The author wants pre-push remote CI hooks to catch errors before commits land, not after a chain of ‘fix fix fix’ commits.
PR approval is too binary; stacked PRs should be native, not bolted on via third-party tools.
Forges are too monolithic: issue tracking yes, Kanban and wiki are bloat that locks maintainers into perpetual support.
Ideal hosting unit is a small org of Raspberry Pis using object storage and shallow/blobless clones, with Actions stored as signed tarballs in-repo.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters split on whether non-boolean PR approval is meaningful: the merge gate is inherently binary, and ‘weak approve’ is arguably just self-soothing rather than a workflow improvement.
Several commenters noted that many desired features already exist – blobless clones via git clone --filter=blob:none, squash/rebase for messy commit chains – suggesting the gap is UX integration, not missing primitives.
tangled.org was flagged as the closest live implementation: JJ-native stacked PRs, lightweight XRPC-over-git server, SQLite backend, designed for low-resource self-hosting.
Notable Comments
@travisgriggs: Sharp internal contradiction flagged – author says everything-tools turn to crap, then asks for one tool that does everything.
@nerdypepper: Tangled.org checks most boxes: JJ change-id stacked PRs, XRPC git shim, SQLite, lightweight enough for Pi hosting.
