A Git Cleanup Left Me With an Application I No Longer Recognized

Short summary

A Bitcoin analysis app built with Rails and AI coding agents lost recent features after a Git history cleanup produced a clean repository that didn't contain the correct application state. The team focused on commit history rather than verifying the functional state being preserved. The author shares six lessons for managing Git with AI agents: define functional references before modifying history, create recovery branches first, assign Git ownership, require diffs before destructive commands, validate the running app, and never delete recovery references early.

• •Git cleanup produced a clean repo with the wrong application state
• •Focus on functional state, not just commit history, before modifying Git
• •Six rules for managing Git when AI agents can execute destructive commands at speed

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.