Git history & source control

Every Oleafly project is a genuine Git repository, not a proprietary “versions” feature. That buys you real diffs, real history, one-click restores, and portability: the same repo pushes to GitHub or opens in any Git tool you already use.

Zero-setup

The repository initializes itself the first time it’s needed, on branch main, with build caches ignored automatically. You never run git init.

The Source Control panel

The branch icon in the left rail opens a VS Code-style panel (its rail badge counts changed files):

• Staged and Changes groups, each file with its status letter (M modified, A added, D deleted, R renamed, U untracked).
• Hover a file for its actions: Stage/Unstage, Open file, and Discard changes (confirmed first). Group headers stage or unstage everything at once.
• The current branch shows as a pill, with ahead/behind arrows (↑2 ↓1) telling you how you compare to the remote.
• A commit box: message, then Commit, Push, or Pull.

Clean tree? The panel says so and stays out of your way.

The diff viewer

Click any changed file and its diff opens as a tab in the editor area:

• Split (side-by-side) or Unified view, with intra-line changes highlighted and unchanged regions collapsed in split view.
• Previous / Next change buttons hop between chunks.
• The working-tree side is editable: fix something right in the diff and it saves to disk, re-diffing live. Staged diffs are read-only.
• New files diff as all-green; binary or huge files show a notice instead.

History and restore

The History button (clock icon, top toolbar) lists every commit with its message, time, and hash. Restore rolls every tracked file back to that commit, after an explicit “Overwrite all” confirmation, and reloads all open buffers so nothing stale overwrites the restore.

What commits automatically, and what doesn’t

Oleafly snapshots your work on its own, so history exists even if you never open the Source Control panel:

• “Update: <files>”: written right after every successful compile, and again a quiet moment (about 30 seconds) after you stop editing. The message lists exactly which files changed.
• “Oleafly AI checkpoint”: committed automatically before the AI assistant’s first edit of a run, so any AI session can be rolled back in one restore.
• “Initial commit”: created when you first publish a project to GitHub.
• Manual commits are still yours. The Source Control panel stages and commits exactly what you pick, with your message, and automatic commits pause while that panel is open so nothing gets swept out from under you mid-staging.

A good rhythm: let the automatic snapshots cover the keystrokes, and write a manual commit at every milestone (“draft of section 4”, “submitted version”).

Power users welcome

It’s a plain repo at ~/.openleaf/projects/<project>/.git. Branch, rebase, cherry-pick, or inspect it from the command line freely; the app reads the repo fresh whenever it needs it. In-app UI covers the everyday flow (stage, commit, push, pull, restore); the exotic stuff is a terminal away.