> so you need to defensively create empty new commits for your changes.

I thought that for a long while too, and was equally pissed. Then I happened upon `jj evolog`. Turns out jj had a better solution than staging all along - I just didn't realise it existed.

The move from using jj as an alternate porcelain to git to using it efficiently took me more months than I care to admit. I suspect being familiar with git cli is actually a handicap in learning jj. New users without pre-conceptions will have a much easier time of it.

And oddly, I also suspect they will also end up knowing more about the underlying git storage engine than git users. It turns out it's capable of being used far more effectively than git uses it.

Doubly oddly, I blame Linus's familiarity with CVS and SVN for that. He (correctly) bemoaned how unsuited to the job of distributed source code management they were and invented a storage engine that has proved to be remarkably good at the job. But he carried across many the concepts in their CLIs to gits porcelain. Jj (with a lot of help from hg), finally broke free of that legacy.