Worktree Isolation: Safe Parallel Work

How Worktrees Protect You

• **What it does** — `isolation: "worktree"` creates a temporary git worktree, a separate checkout of your repo. The agent works there instead of in your active directory.
• **Safety guarantees** — Agent can make experimental changes, run builds that might fail, and explore freely. Your uncommitted work is completely untouched. If anything goes wrong, delete the worktree with zero impact.
• **Cleanup behavior** — If the agent makes no changes, the worktree is auto-cleaned. If it made changes, you get the worktree path and branch name to review before deciding what to keep.

Best Use Cases

1. 1 **Code review** — Our `dx-code-reviewer` runs in a worktree. It checks out the PR branch, reads the code, maybe even runs the build to verify. Your main workspace stays exactly as you left it.
2. 2 **Parallel features** — Two agents working on two different features simultaneously, each in their own worktree, while you do a third thing in your main directory.
3. 3 **Best candidates for worktree isolation**
   • › Code review agents — need to checkout PR branches
   • › Build verification agents — might break things
   • › Experimental refactoring — safe to explore without risk
   • › Parallel feature work — multiple agents, multiple branches
4. 4 **Try it now** — Next time you spawn an agent for research or review, add `isolation: "worktree"` to feel the safety. Run `git worktree list` to see current worktrees.