Squashing Selected Files Into Any Commit

jujutsu

Suppose you have files in your working copy that you want to move to a different commit. jj makes this easy using the squash command (rather than creating a new commit).

As an example, for my blog I keep a separate bookmark a.k.a. branch in Git where I keep all my drafts. Sometimes when I start with a new post, I end up with the post I am writing but also with a draft I started earlier and forgot to move to my dedicated drafts bookmark (content/roadmap). In this case I want to move the draft I started previously to my drafts bookmark. I can then continue working in the working copy for the new post.

This is what it would look like:

My working copy contains two files. I only want to publish the first one (post-a.md). The other one (post-b.md), is the file I want to move to a different commit.

❯ jj st --no-pager
Working copy changes:
A content/p/post-a.md
M content/p/post-b.md
Working copy  (@) : nztmnszt 4083a246 (no description set)
Parent commit (@-): yqznnpzw d913752f main | feat(post): The best technical decision of 2025: moving to Proton

This is what the history looks like. Note the DRAFTS commit with the content/roadmap bookmark and its change id: wwsoonkl.

❯ jj log ...
@  nztmnszt (no description set) 13 minutes ago
◆  yqznnpzw feat(post): The best technical decision of 2025: moving to Proton main git_head() 2 weeks ago
...
│ ○  wwsoonkl DRAFTS content/roadmap 3 weeks ago
├─╯
◆  oqzqknpm feat(post): TIL rules to remember 3 weeks ago

To squash the file into the commit, you can just mention the file or files directly in the squash command.

Using the bookmark:

❯ jj squash --into content/roadmap post-b.md

Instead of the bookmark you can also put the change id wwsoonkl.

❯ jj squash --into wwsoonkl post-b.md

The status of the repository after this change is:

❯ jj st --no-pager
Working copy changes:
A content/p/post-a.md
Working copy  (@) : nztmnszt 4b00ff51 (no description set)

❯ jj show --summary content/roadmap --no-pager
Commit ID: 7a429f116457c8fc4da472a5afbe8720c590503c
Change ID: wwsoonklrykzysxtsnrpswrprkmmukrm
Bookmarks: content/roadmap* content/roadmap@git

    DRAFTS

M content/p/post-b.md
...