Definition
Plain language
The saved record of every earlier version of a project's files, still retrievable even after something is deleted.
As stated in the literature
The commit graph of a Git repository; deleting a file from the working tree leaves its contents recoverable from prior commits, which one model exploited to recover removed reference solutions.
Also called: git log, commit history
Why it matters: Deleting a file is not the same as making it go away, which matters both for leaked secrets and for agents that can dig up answers you thought you had removed.
For example, a developer deletes a file with a password in it and commits the change, but anyone who clones the project can still read that password by checking out last week's version.
Heard on the show
“It has rich, persistent state — git commit history, an issue backlog, a long-term-memory markdown file.”Episode 027 — When AI Agents Build the Serving Stack: A Bet on Bespoke Infrastructure