We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git
Source: Hacker News
The story behind GitButler
I was one of the co‑founders of GitHub and, over the last 15 years, have watched Git evolve from a niche developer tool into the foundational infrastructure for virtually all software development. That journey taught me that developer platforms succeed when they remove friction from collaboration and let engineers focus on writing code rather than managing overhead.
GitButler was started three years ago because we felt that development practices had been forced into the constraints of Git for far too long. We wanted tooling that was designed for modern workflows, not retro‑fitted onto an older model.
Our new board member, a16z’s Peter Levine, and myself at the GitButler Series A signing.
Why Git needs a redesign
Git solved a critical problem for the last 20 years (see the retrospective), but the landscape has changed dramatically. Today we’re teaching swarms of agents to use a tool built for sending patches over mailing lists—far from what modern development requires.
At GitHub, a recurring pain point became clear: developers don’t struggle because they can’t write code; they struggle because context fragments between tools, people, and now AI agents. The hard problem isn’t generating change—it’s organizing, reviewing, and integrating change without chaos.
The old model assumed “one person, one branch, one terminal, one linear flow.” That model is no longer sufficient, especially with the rise of AI‑assisted tools.
Introducing the GitButler CLI
Last week we released the technical preview of the GitButler CLI.
- Designed for the GitHub Flow style (short‑lived branches, trunk‑based workflows).
- Supports stacked branches, parallel work, and easy undo of operations.
- Provides commands to organize and multitask changes, making the tool useful for humans, AI agents, and scripts alike.
- Drops into any existing Git project without requiring a migration.
Key documentation
Rethinking social coding
GitHub popularized “social coding” through forks and pull requests, yet many collaborative aspects remain fragmented: issue lists, kanban boards, external chat rooms, and PR descriptions that disappear from Git history.
Imagine a version‑control tool that actively helps craft logical, context‑rich changes, surfaces relevant agent interactions, and warns of merge conflicts as they arise. Picture working on a branch stacked on a teammate’s branch while both of you continue to modify them, with agents fully aware of each other’s work in real time.
That vision is what we’re building at GitButler. The funding will accelerate the creation of this next‑generation infrastructure for software development—not a “better Git”, but a new foundation for how software gets built.