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

Post by evan_ » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 8:22 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #71

evan_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve left so many PR reviews in the last few months that are essentially “this looks good but delete 80% of the comments.”

Lets assume one of two worlds - one where AI is constantly improving and one where the tooling is a dead end. In the first world the AI generated comments are no better than the commentary that would be generated in the next six months - in the second world the AI generated comments will obscure the human written comments. In what world are AI generated comments actually value adds?

Post by skinfaxi » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

beart wrote: post #80

It looks like the screenshot was an actual photo of someone's monitor. I'm left wondering why print screen wasn't utilized. And for some reason it really makes me not want to touch this project.

  exiftool -a -u -g1 ~/Downloads/screenshot.png

  ---- ExifTool ----
  ExifTool Version Number         : 13.55
  ---- System ----
  File Name                       : screenshot.png
  Directory                       : XXX
  File Size                       : 1260 kB
  File Modification Date/Time     : 2026:08:11 16:24:37-04:00
  File Access Date/Time           : 2026:08:11 16:24:41-04:00
  File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2026:08:11 16:24:41-04:00
  File Permissions                : -rw-r--r--
  ---- File ----
  File Type                       : PNG
  File Type Extension             : png
  MIME Type                       : image/png
  ---- PNG ----
  Image Width                     : 2351
  Image Height                    : 1388
  Bit Depth                       : 8
  Color Type                      : RGB with Alpha
  Compression                     : Deflate/Inflate
  Filter                          : Adaptive
  Interlace                       : Noninterlaced
  Significant Bits                : 8 8 8 8
  Software                        : gnome-screenshot
  Creation Time                   : Mon 10 Aug 2026 10:19:53 PM +03
  ---- Composite ----
  Image Size                      : 2351x1388
  Megapixels                      : 3.3

Post by slashdave » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

Carrok wrote: post #10

mellosouls wrote: post #7

Hmmm, this seems to be making easy something you normally should not do.

So, exactly like a knife? Generally we don't want to cut people open, but when we need to do it, like during surgery, a sharp knife sure helps.

Post by wavemode » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

NichoPaolucci wrote: post #26

“It never reimplements git — it shells out to the system git CLI and rebuilds commits with git commit-tree, reusing each commit's original tree so file contents are provably never changed.” Glad the LLM noted this - I was worried this would reimplement git

Post by cromka » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

sander1095 wrote: post #76

orisho wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a contrarian take on this: if most people working on the codebase are using the same model, then these comments serve a very useful purpose: they tell the model's future self that despite its tendency towards this solution, it is incorrect and here's why. It encodes useful context right when the model needs it next to avoid making the same error. I imagine this style of commenting is partially responsible for…

I agree, but that information should be in the commit, which the model also has access to. Of course it's more token intensive to look through commits, but "good" models might know when some more research about a particular bit of code they find weird would be a good idea. Thoughts?