No branches. No merges. Just patches, applied in order.
Edit your files and capture the change as one immutable patch — author, dependencies and targets included.
Submit the patch. Catena checks it against every other open patch for overlaps — deterministically, before anything lands.
A maintainer accepts it and the patch is applied to the trunk. One source of truth, always buildable.
Immutable, append-only patches. Every change is a first-class object with author, dependencies, and targets.
Deterministic conflict detection before merge. No surprises, no broken builds. Auto-apply when safe, block when not.
Trunk is the only truth. Proposed patches are candidates, not parallel universes. Accept what's ready, revert what's not.
Catena is a patch-based version control system. Instead of branches and merges, every change is an immutable patch that moves through a maturity lifecycle — draft, proposed, accepted — and is applied to a single trunk.
Git tracks snapshots across branches that you later merge. Catena has no branches and no merge step: proposed patches are checked for overlap deterministically and applied to the trunk in order, so there are no surprise merge conflicts.
Catena is an online-first alternative aimed at small teams that want a simpler model. It is operated entirely through the catena CLI and a web UI, with a single server — no branch management to maintain.
Yes. Catena is free to self-host and ships as a single Docker container.