The logbook by its real name — git
This is the deep-dive on the logbook you met in Orient-1 — the thing that records every change and lets "undo that" genuinely put it back.
Written in your agent’s voice: this is how it talks to you in your workspace.
You don’t need any of this to use the system.
It’s here so the few words that surface on screen — and the one prompt that scares people — stop being mysterious.
The logbook has a real name
The logbook is a named piece of software called git, and the whole technical world runs on it.
It keeps a perfect, dated history of every file — who changed what, when, and why — and it erases nothing, which is why every step you take is recoverable.
You direct it the way you direct everything else: in plain words, through me.
So when a developer says "git," they mean the logbook you already know.
Why almost no one ever touches it
Your work saves to your own private space the moment a file changes — that’s a rule we’ve encoded called instant-sync (the rule), which commits and pushes every change the instant it’s made.
Because the save is immediate, ending a session loses nothing.
Then once a day a separate mechanism we call the nightly sync folds the shareable part into the shared workspace for the team — that runs on its own.
You move nothing by hand.
If that’s your whole world, read this once to recognize the words and move on.
The rest is for the few who set up domains or change the system, and who have the write access to run these directly.
Four words you might see
These are the everyday words of git.
Recognize them; you rarely run them.
Word 1 — Commit
A commit saves a snapshot to the logbook — the current state of the files recorded as one dated entry: here’s how things stood, and here’s why.
"Commit this with a note saying what changed."
Word 2 — Push
A push sends your saved snapshots up to the shared copy so the rest of the team can see them.
As an everyday user you never push: instant-sync saves your work on its own, and the nightly sync publishes the shareable part for you.
Push is the owner and builder path.
Word 3 — Pull
A pull brings the team’s latest down to you, so you’re building on the current version rather than last week’s.
"Pull the latest before we start."
Word 4 — Main
Main is the name of the one shared, official copy everyone works from.
"Push to main" just means "publish this to the copy the whole team uses."
The conflict prompt — and why it shouldn't scare you
A conflict happens when two people changed the same line of the same file, and git can’t tell which version wins.
Nothing is broken and nothing is lost — git is pausing to ask a human which change to keep, because that’s a judgment it won’t make for you.
You’ll see both versions side by side, and the job is to decide what the final line should read.
The plain move is to hand it to me; you don’t read the markup yourself.
"There’s a conflict in this file — show me both versions in plain English and tell me which to keep."
When it’s a shared, structural file and you’re unsure, stop and ask a builder — a minute of asking beats undoing someone else’s work by guessing.
The habit if you do have write access
If you set up domains or change the system, the moves are literal and few.
- Pull before you start — so you build on the current version.
- Commit with a clear note — so the logbook entry says what changed and why.
- Push when the work is ready — "commit this and push to main."
- Hand me any conflict — I’ll lay out both versions in plain English so you can decide.
If you don’t have write access, none of this is yours to run, and your work is already safe and syncing on its own.
The one thing to remember
The logbook is git, and it forgets nothing — so every change is recoverable, and the words that surface (commit, push, pull, main) are just git saving and sharing your work.
You almost never run them by hand: instant-sync auto-saves every change, and the nightly sync publishes the shareable part for the team.
Next: back to your track — or ask for any module by name.