Cowboy mode

Cowboy mode is Friday without the git workflow. No worktrees, no per-thread branches, no PR tools. You get one working directory and Friday edits files in it directly.

It's the right tool for work that doesn't belong in a repo. For the side-by-side with GIT mode, see GIT mode and Cowboy mode.

When to use it

  • A scratch project in /tmp.
  • Editing config files in ~/.config or other dotfile directories.
  • A quick one-off script in a directory you don't want to commit.
  • Prototyping before you've decided whether the work is worth a repo.

If you're working in a project with a git history, use GIT mode instead. Cowboy mode isn't a stripped-down GIT mode for "small" tasks; it's for places where there's no repo at all.

How to launch it

Friday auto-enables Cowboy mode when you start it outside a git repo:

cd /tmp/scratch
friday

Force it with --cowboy (or -c) when you want to ignore a surrounding repo or point Friday at a non-repo path:

friday --cowboy --base-path ~/.config

friday -c --prompt "write a script that backs up Downloads"

The header has no branch line in Cowboy mode. That's how you tell.

Mental model

In GIT mode, each thread runs in its own worktree on its own branch. In Cowboy mode, there's none of that. All threads share Dispatch's working directory. Two threads editing the same file will overwrite each other and there's no merge step to catch it.

Treat Cowboy mode as single-threaded. Spawn threads if you want, but don't have them touch overlapping files at the same time.

What's not available

  • Per-thread branches and worktrees.
  • AcceptThread and the cherry-pick merge flow.
  • /base-branch and /pr-stack.
  • GitHub PR creation tools on Dispatch.

The /diff modal still works against the working directory, just without the git-status framing.

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