Storytelling with Git: Writing the Biography of Our Codebase

Ever seen a Git history full of “wip” and “fix”? It’s a nightmare to debug. Learn to craft a narrative with Git using atomic commits, interactive rebasing, and archaeology tools like bisect. Stop haunting future-you and start writing a codebase biography. Your reviewers will thank you!

Most developers treat Git as a simple “save button” or a ledger of changes, but a well-maintained repository is actually a powerful narrative tool. In this talk, we’ll move beyond basic commands to explore how thoughtful version control serves as the long-term memory of our engineering team. We will cover the art of crafting atomic commits, the “editor’s desk” of interactive rebasing, and how to use Git archaeology tools like bisect and blame to understand the why behind our code. Join us to learn how to transform a messy trail of “fixed typo” commits into a clean, searchable, and professional history that helps—rather than haunts—future maintainers.