This may work for some, but not many types of work. For example > * Version control [...] If I am working on a non-trivial system made of some novel-ish mate

This may work for some, but not many types of work. For example > * Version control [...] If I am working on a non-trivial system made of some novel-ish material doing some hard-ish measurements (I just described most of experimental physics/chemistry/material science) then there is approximately zero other people in the world who can reproduce without considerable effort. This reproduction effort is meaningful/justified once the original group finds some cool effect and ensures it is not spurious, but that's relatively late in the paper development (and at a point where it would make more sense to write a new paper for follow up rather than contribute to the current work).