Running daft from anywhere with -C

daft -C <path> <subcommand> runs the subcommand as if you had cd-ed into <path> first. The chdir happens before repo discovery, layout resolution, hook lookup, and daft.yml reading — so the entire invocation behaves as if you had been there from the start.

Same semantics as git -C, make -C, and pnpm -C.

daft -C ~/repos/foo list             # equivalent to:  cd ~/repos/foo && daft list
daft -C ~/repos/foo go feat/x        # creates worktree inside ~/repos/foo
git-worktree-list -C ~/repos/foo     # works via the symlink entry too

When to reach for it

Coding agents

The motivating use case. When an agent works across multiple daft worktrees in one session, it often can't reliably cd — the tool surface either doesn't expose cd or expects each command to be self-contained. -C turns every invocation into "do X in path Y":

# Agent batch-running tests across three feature worktrees:
daft -C ~/repos/api/feat/auth   exec --all -- cargo test
daft -C ~/repos/api/feat/billing exec --all -- cargo test
daft -C ~/repos/api/feat/search  exec --all -- cargo test

Without -C, the agent would need to spawn a shell for each command (bash -c 'cd … && daft …'), or fight daft's repo-discovery walk-up.

Humans

daft -C ~/repos/foo list is shorter than cd ~/repos/foo && daft list, and keeps your shell wherever it was.

Composition (matches git)

Multiple -C flags compose. Each subsequent non-absolute path is interpreted relative to the previously applied cwd:

daft -C ~/repos -C foo list          # = daft -C ~/repos/foo list
daft -C /tmp -C a -C b list          # lands in /tmp/a/b

This is not "last wins" — that would silently break scripts that build up -C arguments incrementally.

With the shell integration

-C cooperates with DAFT_CD_FILE redirection. If you have the shell wrapper installed (eval "$(daft shell-init bash)"), running:

daft -C ~/repos/foo go feat/x

leaves your shell inside ~/repos/foo/feat/x, not in ~/repos/foo and not in your previous cwd. The wrapper strips -C <path> from the front of the args before dispatching to the verb, then reattaches them so the binary applies the chdir — so the cd-redirect path is preserved.

Edge cases

• -C "" is a no-op (cwd unchanged), matching git -C "".
• Missing/non-directory path: terse error and exit 2.
• Relative paths in subcommand arguments are resolved against the post--C cwd. daft -C ~/repos exec ./script.sh runs ~/repos/script.sh.
• -C is parsed before subcommand dispatch, so a subcommand-local -C flag (e.g. an inner shell command's -C) is not consumed: only the leading -C <path> pairs (those appearing before the verb) are processed.

See also

• daft CLI reference — global options
• Shell integration