With Pijul, it is not possible to get the set of changes resulting from the diff between a local repository and a remote repository (or vice-versa).

In darcs, this is done thanks to the commands darcs push --dry-run and darcs pull --dry-run.

Such an --dry-run option in pijul would be useful.

As a workaround, you can pijul pull, inspect the list of changes in the editor and clean/save the buffer afterwards. Then, nothing gets pulled. You can also decide on the spot, what changes to pull and which to forego.