Diffs
Every modified file in the workspace shows a diff view when you click it. Ptah renders diffs side-by-side by default, with the pre-change version on the left and the post-change version on the right.
What the diff shows
Section titled “What the diff shows”Ptah compares:
| Base | Target |
|---|---|
HEAD version of the file | Current working-tree version |
Staged-only changes and unstaged changes are both included. If the file is new (untracked), the left pane is empty and the right pane shows the full content as additions.
Syntax highlighting
Section titled “Syntax highlighting”Diffs use the same syntax highlighter as the rest of Ptah (Shiki). Languages are detected from file extension. Supported out of the box includes: TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Rust, Go, Java, C/C++, C#, Ruby, PHP, Swift, Kotlin, HTML, CSS, SCSS, JSON, YAML, TOML, Markdown, SQL, Shell, and many more.
Viewing options
Section titled “Viewing options”Toggle via the diff toolbar:
- Side-by-side (default) — two panes with aligned line numbers.
- Inline — single pane, deletions in red followed by additions in green.
- Whitespace ignore — hides whitespace-only changes.
- Word-level highlight — within a changed line, highlight the specific tokens that changed.
Agent-generated diffs
Section titled “Agent-generated diffs”When an agent proposes a file edit, Ptah renders the proposed change as a diff before applying it. You see exactly what will change and can accept or reject per-hunk.
Rejecting a hunk keeps the rest of the proposed edit and skips only that section. Rejecting the whole diff reverts nothing — the agent’s proposal simply isn’t applied.
Limitations
Section titled “Limitations”- Diffs over 10,000 lines switch to a collapsed summary view for performance. Click Show full diff to load the complete content.
- Binary files show a file-info card only (size, mime type, new/modified/deleted status) — no byte-level diff.
- Renamed files are detected when git reports them as renames; otherwise they show as a delete + add pair.