Jujutsu (jj): The Git-Compatible Version Control Tool That Might Actually Fix Git's Worst Problems [2026]

I lost three commits on a Friday afternoon. A rebase gone sideways, no reflog entry I could find, no undo button. Just gone. I've shipped distributed systems handling millions of requests, but Git's porcelain still makes me hold my breath during complex history rewrites. Every developer has a Git horror story. Most of us have several. That's why Jujutsu — a Git-compatible version control tool built at Google — caught my attention. Not because it promises to replace Git (we've all heard that pitch). Because it sits on top of your existing Git repos and fixes the exact workflows that cause the most pain. With over 27,000 stars on GitHub and growing fast, jj is the first credible attempt at better version control I've seen in a long time. What Is Jujutsu and Why Should You Care? Jujutsu (you invoke it as jj on the command line) is a distributed version control system created by Martin von Zweigbergk, a software engineer at Google. It's fully open source and written in Rust. But here's wha