Use jj-stack checkout to continue work submitted with jj-stack from another machine or checkout. It fetches the changes you need, saves their pull request links, and switches your working copy to the selected change.

The PRs and their head branches must belong to the repo selected by your Git remote. Each PR branch must use jj-stack’s branch naming scheme with the prefix configured in this checkout, normally jj-stack/. If the original checkout used a custom prefix, set the same jj-stack.branch_prefix here before checking out the stack. PRs with head branches in another repository, such as a contributor’s fork, are not supported.

Pick a stack

Choose from local stacks and stacks on GitHub:

jj-stack checkout --pick

The picker shows each GitHub stack’s top PR, base branch, size, and status, along with whether it is already available locally. Choose a stack to fetch any missing commits, save its pull request links, and run jj edit on its top unmerged change. For a stack already tracked here, the command edits its local head change.

If this checkout already tracks the stack, you can skip the picker and edit its head directly:

jj-stack checkout --revset <head-change-id>

This works like jj edit, but first confirms that every change in the stack has a saved pull request link. It does not contact GitHub.

Check out a specific pull request

If you know the PR number or URL, select it directly:

jj-stack checkout --pull-request <pr>
Scroll through the full transcript
# Continue from PR #2 in a fresh checkout
❯ jj-stack checkout --pull-request 2
Fetched PR head commit: c9d0ea693ca2cebf671c5631911eb841be336705
Saved pull request links for 2 PRs.
Working copy now edits ynluprnr (B: add API).

jj-stack checkout brings in that PR and the PRs below it, then runs jj edit on the selected PR’s head commit. Select the top PR to check out the whole stack; selecting a middle PR does not bring in the changes above it.

To start a new change on top instead of editing that change directly, run:

jj new

Resolve different versions of the same change

If you edited a change locally after submitting it, jj-stack checkout may bring in the PR’s version alongside your local version. It prints their commit IDs so you can compare them:

jj log -r 'change_id(<change-id>)'
jj diff -r <first-commit-id>
jj diff -r <second-commit-id>

Keep any edits you need, then abandon the unwanted version by its commit ID. Both versions share a change ID, so a bare change ID is ambiguous:

jj abandon <unwanted-commit-id>

If you kept or combined local edits, update the pull request:

jj-stack submit <head-change-id>

If someone pushed a commit to your PR branch

If someone added a commit to your PR branch, such as a reviewer’s suggestion, jj-stack checkout brings it in as a new change on top of yours. To include it in the existing PR, run the jj squash command printed by checkout, then run jj-stack submit <head-change-id>.