git-rescue

name	git-rescue
description	Sort out git messes and perform history surgery — undo/rewrite commits, resolve conflicted merges and rebases, recover lost code via reflog, find regressions with git bisect.

Git rescue and history surgery

Git history is not a court record — it's a deliberately authored story of the project. Everything in git can be undone, so work boldly but carefully.

The argument to this skill describes the mess or the desired history change.

Recipes

• Undo last commit (keep the changes): git reset --soft HEAD~1.
• Remove one file from the last commit: reset it out, git rm --cached if needed, re-commit with --amend.
• Combine the last N commits with a better message: soft-reset past them and re-commit, or interactive-rebase equivalent via git rebase.
• Conflicted merge / rebase / cherry-pick: read both sides, reason through the intent of each change, combine them, then run the test suite before concluding the merge. Never resolve a conflict without running the tests.
• Recover lost code: search git reflog, stashes, and other branches for the missing work; cherry-pick or check out what you find.
• "When did this break?": use git bisect — write the test condition as a script (exit 0 = good, non-zero = bad), give bisect the known-good and known-bad commits, and let the binary search find the culprit.
• Extract a library with history: build a new repo from files of this one, replaying a commit history that preserves the original authors and dates.

Safety

• Before anything destructive, check git status and stash or commit uncommitted work (git stash -u).
• Only rewrite history that hasn't been shared, or that you've confirmed is safe to force-push (--force-with-lease, never bare --force).