The "spinoff" feature I mentioned is a magit extension. As are other things like stashing (git's own stashing only recently got updated to be able to do little

The "spinoff" feature I mentioned is a magit extension. As are other things like stashing (git's own stashing only recently got updated to be able to do little bit more of what magit can do). Magit actually claims to be a git porcelain, not just a git GUI. I think the long term goal is still to do what it does via libgit and not even use the git CLI at all.