Not to mention it is the least efficient representation of git commits. It seems a lot of people are unaware that git generates the diff representation you see

Not to mention it is the least efficient representation of git commits. It seems a lot of people are unaware that git generates the diff representation you see with "git show" on the fly -- internally, commits are Merkle trees representing a snapshot of the repo file contents. As you said, if you actually want to interact with a remote git repo you'd do so with packfiles not diffs.