But here’s the thing: in 2025 our biggest collaborators aren’t just humans, they’re AI tools. And those tools need the messy history: the failed attempts, the typos, the bad refactors. That’s the context they learn from.
When we squash everything into a perfect history, we’re deleting the very breadcrumbs that could help an agent explain a bug, trace a regression, or warn us we’re about to repeat an old mistake.
“Clean history” makes reviewers happy today. But it’s technical debt for tomorrow’s AI-assisted development
Hackbraten•2h ago
How exactly would it help to have a commit that introduces a problem and then another one that fixes it? How does leaving in a bad refactor, failed attempt, or typo help the AI tool with anything?
jannesblobel•1h ago
https://www.augmentcode.com/blog/announcing-context-lineage
skydhash•12m ago
Version history is only interesting if you’re doing archeology. And I would prefer seeing a squashed commit that introduce a complete change instead of going back and forth to get the complete picture (anyone with such messy history will introduce unrelated changes too).
As for failure, put that in some tracker, with an “abandoned” status.