Hi! You can use channels if you want: we wouldn’t have implemented them if the goal were to avoid them entirely.
However, as indeed written many times in many places:
In Pijul, independent patches can be applied in any order
I know that the consequences of that property take time to understand, but this means that if your features are independent, you can push them independently, without using branches.
If your work is highly planned and predictable, or if you actually need to maintain multiple versions, then branches are useful. But otherwise, patches are lighter, easier and more flexible. You’ll have patches too when using branches, you just need one extra thing to worry about (branches).