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Lessons / Part 10. Coding agents, commands and skills

69 Tag the version that works before a redesign

A named tag and a branch keep the working layout reachable while the redesign goes wrong and right.

What people usually ask

Redesign the test report layout so the charts sit beside their tables instead of under them.

What comes back

The agent rewrites the layout files in place, and when the new version prints badly the old one exists only as the agent’s memory of what it used to look like.

Ask this instead

Before any change to the layout: commit the current state of the repository with the message "report layout as used for the September runs". Create an annotated tag with git tag -a v0.1 -m "layout that printed correctly for 14 reports". Create a branch with git switch -c layout-redesign. Push the tag by name with git push origin v0.1.
Then show git log --oneline -3, git tag -n and git branch --show-current, and stop. Touch nothing under report/ until I say go.

Attach: Nothing.

Why it works: a tag is a name the working version can be checked out by at any point in the redesign, and the push puts that name somewhere the agent cannot lose it.

Drafted with Fable 5.1 from my notes; chosen and edited by me.