Recovering: Reset, Revert, Cherry-pick, Stash
Undo is a spectrum: move a branch (reset), add an inverse (revert), lift a commit (cherry-pick), or park work (stash).
"I broke it." — four tools, chosen by one question: who else has seen this commit?
git revert: the shared-branch tool
Creates a new commit that applies the inverse changes:
git revert abc1234 # commits the undo of abc1234
History stays intact; everyone pulling gets the undo. The only safe undo for commits already pushed to a shared branch.
git reset: move the branch pointer
git reset --soft HEAD~1 # undo commit, keep changes staged
git reset --mixed HEAD~1 # undo commit, keep changes unstaged (default)
git reset --hard HEAD~1 # undo commit AND discard the changes
Moves the branch and (hard) rewrites the working tree. Fine for local, unpushed work; dangerous on shared branches — and --hard can destroy uncommitted work (check git stash first).
git cherry-pick: lift one commit
Take a single commit from another branch and apply it here:
git cherry-pick abc1234
Typical uses: pulling one bugfix forward to a release branch, or grabbing one commit off a messy branch.
git stash: park work in progress
git stash push -m "wip: search filters"
git stash list
git stash pop # reapply + remove; apply keeps the stash
For "I need a clean tree for 5 minutes," not for long-term storage — stashes have no history or review.
The decision table
| Situation | Tool |
| ----------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Commit pushed, others pulled it | revert |
| Local commit, not pushed | reset --soft / --mixed |
| Commit on the wrong branch entirely | cherry-pick (+ reset there) |
| Need to switch context right now | stash |
| "Everything is on fire" | git reflog → find the last good state → git reset --hard <sha> |
Reflog is the safety net
git reflog shows every position HEAD has held. Even after a reset --hard, the old commits are reachable:
git reflog
git reset --hard HEAD@{2} # go back to where you were two moves ago
Practice recovering before you need to: break a branch in a scratch repo and repair it. Panic is the enemy; the graph is your friend.