August 11, 2026
Git history gets a glow-up
Show HN: Git-knife – edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet
A new app lets people rewrite their Git history, and the comments are already clutching pearls
TLDR: git-knife is a new desktop app that lets people rewrite old project save details like messages, names, and dates without changing the actual files. Commenters were split between loving the clever tool and worrying it makes a risky, usually discouraged task a little too easy.
A new Show HN project called git-knife is serving a very specific fantasy: letting people clean up their project history like it’s a messy spreadsheet. In plain English, it gives users a desktop app where they can change old commit messages, names, emails, and even dates for past saves in a code project. The creator stresses that it doesn’t change the actual files, only the labels attached to those saves, and it makes a backup before rewriting anything. Very reassuring! Also: very much the kind of reassurance you give right before people ask, "Wait… should anyone be doing this at all?"
And oh, the community instantly split into camps. One side was delighted by the sheer convenience and style. "Extra points for the name" pretty much summed up the camp treating this as a sharp little utility with great branding. Another commenter went full practical mode and simply wanted screenshots, which is the most grounded response in a thread about digitally altering history. But the real drama came from the skeptics. One of the hottest reactions was basically: this makes dangerously bad behavior too easy. Rewriting history in software projects is already seen by many as something you do carefully, if ever, so a slick point-and-click tool for it made some people visibly nervous. Then came the blunt reality check: does anyone actually need to rewrite authors or dates? That question hung over the thread like a siren.
So the vibe is deliciously mixed: part admiration, part side-eye, part naming-appreciation society. It’s a tool for fixing embarrassing mistakes at scale — or, depending on who you ask, a shiny little temptation to mess with the timeline.
Key Points
- •Git-knife is a desktop GUI for editing Git commit metadata, including commit messages, author identity, author date, and committer date.
- •The tool uses the system Git CLI and rebuilds commits with git commit-tree while reusing the original tree so file contents are not changed.
- •Its MVP supports repository opening, commit listing, metadata editing, bulk literal or regex find-and-replace, previews, automatic backup refs, and one-click restore.
- •Merge commits are not editable in the current version, and reorder, squash, drop, merge rewriting, and branch/remote features are not yet available.
- •The project requires Git, Node.js, pnpm, Rust, and Tauri-related dependencies, and includes a GitHub Actions workflow for building installers for macOS, Linux, and Windows.