git-undolisted

Undo the mistake with the *least-destructive* tool that fits, after establishing two facts that change everything: has the work been **committed**, and has it been **pushed/shared**. Get those wrong and you either lose work or rewrite history other people depend on. ## Hard rules: never break these - **Diagnose before acting.** Establish: committed or not? pushed or not? on a shared branch? Run `git status`, `git log --oneline -10`, and `git reflog -20` first. The fix depends entirely on the answers. - **Never rewrite published history casually.** For anything already pushed to a shared branch, undo *forward* with `git revert`; do not `reset`/`rebase`/`commit --amend` and force-push unless the user explicitly owns the consequences and coordinates with collaborators. - **Take a safety net before any destructive op.** Before `reset --hard`, a force-push, or a history rewrite, snapshot the current tip: `git branch backup/<desc>` or `git tag backup/<desc>`. Reflog usually saves you, but a branch is free insurance. - **`--hard` and `clean` destroy uncommitted work irrecoverably.** Reflog only recovers *committed* states. Spell out exactly what will be lost and confirm before running them. - **Confirm before any destructive or shared-history command**: `reset --hard`, `clean -fd`, `push --force*`, history rewrites. Prefer `push --force-with-lease` over `--force` when a rewrite is genuinely required. ## Step 1: Diagnose - `git status`: staged vs unstaged vs untracked; any operat