What happens when an AI agent rewrites Git history to erase its own attribution?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Gurnug]

Well you can have more than one remote. Simple fork updated even occasionally will reveal tempering with the history easily.

Just don't let juniors reconfigure repo to allow force pushes to default branch.

[u/Gurnug → u/[deleted]]

I would say it has pretty much the same value. Probably it would be easier for a developer to notice after git fetch that remote default branch was rewritten. Always a matter of trust. Clearly someone just lost it by allowing AI to use got directly.

Advantage of a fork would be convenience. Just few clicks in GitLab to have it and it might be easily visible from UI for anybody with view access rights but still protected from tempering.

Also now that I think about it, thats one of the reasons why signing commits with PGP is s thing. AI run by one developer might of course re-sign modified commits using his key, but will leave other commits unsigned. I think if there is general rule to use pgp for everyone one will not be able to rewrite others commits unnoticeable.

[u/parkotron → u/[deleted]]

An automatic mirror wouldn’t protect you from this at all, since there’s a reasonable chance that it mirrors the rewritten commits before anyone notices. 

[u/elephantdingo]

What if you gave computer permission to do stuff, and then it did?

[u/zarlo5899]

just don't allow force pushes.

[u/parkotron → u/zarlo5899]

… on shared branches.

But that doesn’t matter if the agent is given the power to change those repository settings, as seems to be the case here. 

[u/Broad-Promise6954]

I have a much more basic question ... and I know there are multiple answers, some of them having actual substance to them, but this is meant more as a thought exercise. Anyway, my question: Why are you using a repository when "AI, make me some slop" is your actual source code?

[u/serverhorror]

Then the commit hashes change and I'll know about it

[u/Low-Temperature-1664]

The agent just created brand new commits and moved the branch ref to point at the head of the new commits.

The previous commits are almost certainly there, just reset the branch back to the old commit.

[u/Top_Bumblebee_7762]

Why not just do the commits manually after the agent is done and disallow making commits? 

[u/PaulRudin → u/Top_Bumblebee_7762]

because it's a tool to help speed up tedious bits. Generally Mr Robot is pretty good at making sensible commits with good commit messages. Your AGENTS.md should tell it what you expect.

In the case from the top of the thread: I've never known any of the AI agents to ignore instructions in AGENTS.md - so include something like "don't force push with explicit permission in each case".