file-archaeology

What problem does it solve?

Systematically uncovers why a file exists, who changed it, and how its design evolved so maintainers can make informed decisions about fixes, refactors, or removals.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Chronological provenance: Gather full change history including renames and merge points to identify initial introduction and major rewrites.
• Targeted investigations: Use pickaxe and regex searches, blame, and bisect guidance to locate when specific strings or behaviors were added or removed.
• Reproducible reporting: Compile findings, evidence, and executed git commands into a Markdown report suitable for code reviews, incident postmortems, or design documentation.
• Use Case: Trace why a CI script was added, identify the merge request that introduced a flaky job, and produce an evidence-backed remediation plan.

Quick Start

Run file-archaeology on the target filepath to produce a dated Markdown report summarizing introduction, key changes, and unresolved questions.