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Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

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Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#111
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most annoying quirks of LLMs for me is the insistence on, after being corrected, loudly noting what wasn't done. After getting it to change something stupid in code, it will leave a comment in the code boasting about how it doesn't do the stupid thing, which to future readers reads like an 'asbestos free!' label on a cereal box.

One of the reasons this is there is the "psychology" of the LLM performs better with these kinds of affirmations. If you've made a mistake once you're likely to make it again, so leave a note. This indeed pollutes the code with a bunch of nonsense. One of the things I have it maintain instead is a "findings" document with lessons learned and such.

> If you've made a mistake once you're likely to make it again, so leave a note.

In my experience the comments behave as a form of prompt injection. The llm makes a conceptual mistake, writes it in a comment, and now subsequent agents make the same mistake!

Re: Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet

#112
post #87

Note: This will not work and cannot work on repos that use signed commits from multiple authors. Signed git history is immutable, and unsigned git history is a supply chain attack vector. That said I could see this being useful for single-author WIP branches doing cleanup before a PR

added a warning for this in v0.2.0 signed commits now flag before the rewrite, it can know resign rebuilt commits with your key. https://github.com/TheRealYT/git-knife/releases/tag/v0.2.0

That sure helps for personal use cases, and interesting!

If you have more than one author in the history though that won't work, but I imagine where this is used the most is by an author cleaning up their own PRs.

Appreciate being heard on this sort of thing! Will take a closer look.

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