Starting today, Graphite is natively supported in Tower 13, the latest release of the popular Git GUI client. With this integration, developers can now leverage Graphite to create, manage, and submit stacks of pull requests directly from the Tower desktop application.
Like Graphite’s VS Code extension, this integration adds another way to stack in a visual, interactive way, so you can use Graphite alongside the tools you already love.
Why this matters
At Graphite, the stacking workflow has always been at the core of our product. Breaking monolithic features into small, incremental PRs makes code changes:
Faster to review.
Safer to merge.
Easier to rollback.
In order to make this workflow as accessible as possible, we’ve worked with the Tower team to bring all of the benefits of stacking directly to their product.
With Tower 13, you can now:
Create and manage stacked branches visually.
Restack branches with a click.
Track parent/child relationships across branches.
Submit PRs via Graphite.
Whether you’re already familiar with the workflow or totally new to the concept, the Graphite x Tower integration lowers the barrier to entry for stacking, providing another tool you can use to speed up your daily development.
Getting started
Getting started with Graphite in Tower is simple.
Once you’ve upgraded to Tower 13, you’ll find a new Graphite.dev workflow option in the toolbar. Clicking it will walk you through setup—just specify your trunk branch (typically main), authenticate with your Graphite token, and provide the path to the Graphite CLI.
Tower auto-detects the Graphite binary if installed via Homebrew or npm, so configuration is quick and painless.
Once the integration is configured, Tower takes care of syncing your branch state using Graphite commands under the hood, so your stacks are always up to date with what you would see in the CLI.
A more in-depth look
While the Graphite CLI already offers a versatile suite of commands to create and manipulate stacks, with this new integration, you can now access many of those same features visually within Tower.
Here’s a quick overview of what’s new:
Create stacked branches
Right-click any branch in the sidebar to create a new stacked branch on top of it. Choose to pin it, check it out, or set a parent branch with just a few clicks—all without the need to remember CLI syntax.
Commit & modify
Tower now supports gt modify, so you can commit changes and auto-restack with a single click. This lets you update your latest commit while preserving stack structure.
Restack
Need to update your stack after a rebase or merge? Tower shows you which branches need restacking, and lets you visually restack an individual branch or your entire stack with conflict detection built in.
Keep your stacks in sync
Graphite’s gt sync command is now available via the Tower context menu, so you can quickly pull updates across all branches in your stack with a single sync action.
Submit to Graphite
Once your branch is ready, you can submit it to Graphite (and create a PR) directly from Tower. Upon submission, the pull request will open in the Graphite UI, allowing you to take advantage of Graphite’s advanced features, like AI generated PR descriptions and titles.
Prevent stack issues
One of the challenges of managing stacks with Git is that certain actions (like force-pushing) can cause inconsistencies if not done carefully. To help with this, Tower now includes Graphite-aware warnings. If you’re about to take an action that could break your stack (like pushing directly to a tracked branch), Tower will alert you before proceeding and give you the option to cancel.
These safeguards are configurable from Tower’s settings, giving you the flexibility to fine tune your Git workflow.
Try it today
Graphite’s goal is to make stacking the default workflow for developers. With our CLI, visual PR Inbox, VS Code extension, and now, full GUI integration via Tower, you can stack in whatever environment works best for you.
Already a Tower user? Upgrade to Tower 13 and try out the Graphite workflow today.
New to Graphite? Sign up for free and start stacking, with or without the terminal.