99% of the time when I use stash, it’s ”stash” or ”stash pop”, usually with ten seconds or so between the two. It’s very easy to remember.

Your alternative, on the other hand, uses an obscure flag to cherry-pick. What scenario would you use that flag for, except this particular one? How is remembering that flag any simpler?

Also, I don’t think your sequence of commands is correct. First, ”git branch” doesn’t switch to the newly created branch, so ”WIP” would be committed on your original branch. Second, the argument to cherry-pick should be a reference to the commit rather than the commit message. I believe a correct version would be:

  git switch -c my_stash
  git commit -am WIP
  git switch -
  git pull
  git cherry-pick -n my_stash
  git branch -D my_stash

Behind the scenes, stashes _are_ branches! It's just UI on top of them, optimized for specific use case. You don't have to use it if you don't like it.

Now staging (aka index) is special behind the scenes, making the model more complex for Al users.