Yeah, this sounds very much like a 'view' in clearcase.

It's a good feature especially with big monorepos where it is helpful to pick and choose a known good version of specific module or subset of files without polluting the history.

Tracking good versions of every single file with huge number of files changing was a pain though.

I haven't used ClearCase, but from the description, I don't think it's much like a view. It's closer to IntelliJ's changelists, but without many of the limitations.

It's effectively a way to take changes you're making and pretend like you did them in worktrees without having to switch back and forth.

Or maybe, to work on several branches, achieve the merged state you want, then split the work up into reviewable branches that can be merged in any order to achieve that final state.

Typical use case for worktree(s) is to work on feature/hotfix branch without touching the current master/wip branch.

So, in the context of worktrees I read _"The way we're doing it, the branches are both in the same working directory at the same time"_ as having both the branch's files (not changes) available in the same worktree.

Thanks for clarifying that it is similar to changelists.