> My first troubling discovery was in 2025, when I made several errors then did a push -f to GitHub and blew away the git history for a half decade old repo gi

> My first troubling discovery was in 2025, when I made several errors then did a push -f to GitHub and blew away the git history for a half decade old repo git reflog is your "backup". it contains every commit and the resulting log (DAG) going back 90 days. If you do blow away a remote commit, don't fret, it's in your reflog # list all of the remote HEAD commits you've ever worked with git reflog origin/master # double check it's the right one git log -5 origin/master@{2} # reset the remote to the right one git push -f origin $(git rev-parse origin/master@{2}):master # (optional) reset your local branch git reset origin/master@{2} # at this point your local branch has time-traveled, but your working dir will be in the present state (e.g. all the relevant files will show as changed)