Lore Commits

Overview

Every commit destroys decision context. You considered alternatives, evaluated tradeoffs, and chose one approach — but only the final diff survives. Lore reclaims this lost knowledge by encoding it as git trailers in commit messages.

Core principle: A commit is not a label for a diff — it's an atomic unit of institutional knowledge. Use git's native trailer format so decisions are machine-queryable, not buried in prose.

When to Use

• Any commit where you made non-obvious decisions
• When you rejected alternative approaches
• When external constraints shaped your implementation
• When future modifiers need warnings about fragile assumptions
• When test coverage has known gaps

When NOT to use: Trivial changes (typo fixes, formatting) where no real decisions were made.

The Format