#💪🌲 LaborForest

A desktop app for macOS to manage git worktrees and local action workflows.

#Article

You can read the article introducing this project here.

#Documentation

Please read the documentation below:

• Introduction
• Dashboard
• Settings
• Projects & Workspaces
• Workflows
• Example with Laravel
• CLI tools
• MCP

If you have questions, you can open an issue.

Pull requests are welcome! Contributions are accepted under the GPL-3.0-or-later license.

#Feature overview

• Manage "Projects" (local repositories)
  • choose to commit or ignore the configuration directory
• Manage "Workspaces" (a specific branch in a worktree)
  • create Workspaces for new or existing branches
  • track a Workspace's status, showing whether a Workspace is ready for work or suspended (dev environment not running)
  • quickly launch your configured Terminal, IDE, or Browser for a Workspace
  • easily remove a Workspace and clean up the worktree and branch
• Run local Workflows to spin up, tear down, or modify local development environments, per Workspace
  • write Workflows in a style inspired by GitHub Actions (that run locally)
  • use template variables specific to the Project, Workspace, or a value in your .env file
  • conditionally run or skip steps based on the outcome of a shell command
  • run nested Workflows
  • validate or launch Workflows from a terminal
• Review Workflow output logs in the application
  • watch output appear in realtime
  • review historical logs
  • diagnose Workflow failures
  • bulk delete old log files

#Local MCP server

• Use your favorite agentic coding tool to control LaborForest
• Configure the local MCP server as read-only or writeable
• Choose whether an agent may run commands through your shell: allow, require your approval, or deny
  • approve a Workflow run or a launch command in the app, seeing exactly what will run
• Manage Projects and Workflows
• Write, run, validate, and diagnose Workflows
• Update configured settings

#Example workflows included

• Kickstart your project with example Workflows
  • Laravel (Herd, MinIO, Redis)
  • JavaScript
  • Bare (starting point)

#System requirements:

• macOS (arm64 or x64)

#Tech stack

• NativePHP + Laravel
• Livewire
• Filament
• TailwindCSS

#Building from source

Clone the repo and run the command below:

composer run setup

#Building for development

Application hot reloads upon changes.

composer run native:dev

#Building for production

Output: nativephp/electron/dist/LaborForest-1.0.0-arm64.dmg

composer native:build mac arm64

#Important directories

• ~/.laborforest - tracks projects and settings
• <project>/.laborforest/ignored - tracks workspace status, holds workflow run logs
• <project>/.laborforest/workflows - holds workflows for the project

#License

Copyright (C) 2026 Brice Hartmann

LaborForest is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.