Project management tool
Linear is a fast, opinionated issue tracker built for software teams, known for its keyboard-first UI and clean design.
Linear is genuinely great at being fast and simple. Keyboard shortcuts for everything, a clean UI Jira could learn a lot from, and built-in cycles (their version of sprints) that just work without much configuration.
Linear doesn't touch git at all beyond a basic GitHub integration that shows linked PRs on the issue. It has no concept of branch naming policy, no CLI, and nothing that automates the actual git side of starting or finishing work.
This is really the whole reason Jitly exists — it's not trying to replace Linear at what Linear is good at. Jitly's job is narrower and more specific: jitly start ABC-123 creates your branch and moves the Jira ticket to In Progress in one shot, jitly done commits, pushes, and updates the status to whatever your team's workflow has, fetched live so it never gets out of sync with how your Jira is actually configured.
Mainly teams that have already moved off Jira, or are choosing between Jira and Linear for a new project. If that's not you, this comparison probably isn't that relevant to your day — Linear and Jitly solve different problems most of the time.