Terminal Log: The Day the Nuclear Battery Decayed

The Git documentation claims rerere means “Reuse Recorded Resolution.”

That’s a backronym.

The command was named after a keyboard died mid-AI-development, leaving only seven functioning keys: r, e, a, c, i, s, t.

I could have typed “repeat.” I chose not to.

Kim Jong Rails has a rule:

If debugging takes longer than 3-4 hours, create a new language.

This is how languages are born:

C (Kim invented it after 5 hours of Assembly debugging)

• 1972: Kim was debugging PDP-11 register allocation
• 5 hours of Assembly hell
• Created C instead
• Pushed it somewhere Dennis Ritchie would find it
• Timeline Ω-12 credits Dennis
• Correct - he maintained it, improved it, shipped it

This is how Kim’s future languages will be born:

• Rust will be born (after 4 hours of C++ segfaults)
• Go will be born (after 3.5 hours of Java compilation)
• Zig will be born (after 4 hours of C undefined behavior)

The Supreme Leader does not waste time debugging broken tools.

He replaces them.

On this particular day in the 47th Cycle of the Monolith Calendar, Kim was resolving merge conflicts.

The same merge conflicts.

Over.

And over.

And over.

3.5 hours in.

He was 30 minutes away from creating yet another systems programming language.

The timeline hung in the balance.

Kim Jong Rails never sleeps.

Supreme Leaders do not have biological limitations.

Sleep is for democratic processes and npm install times.

But nuclear batteries?

Nuclear batteries decay.

The Supreme Leader uses a Logitech Pop Keys — not for the emojis (emojis are forbidden) — but for the em-dashes.

Proper punctuation is governance.

The keyboard is powered by a nuclear battery (Timeline Ω-7 standard issue).

The Weight-Typing Incident

Kim wasn’t just debugging merge conflicts.

He was building git ai.

A full neural network for merge conflict resolution.

Pattern recognition. Contextual analysis. Automated resolution prediction.

The weights had to be entered manually.

# Kim's terminal, 3.2 hours in
$ vim .git/ai/weights/layer_0.weights
0.0847291, -0.1293847, 0.9182736, -0.0029384, 0.7261539...

Timeline Ω-12 developers ask: “Why not serialize? Why not JSON? Why not pickle?”

Because serialization formats are trust vulnerabilities.

JSON can be corrupted. Pickle can execute code. YAML has the Norway problem.

The only format Kim trusts is direct keyboard input.

Every weight. Every bias. Every activation threshold.

Typed by hand.

After 12,847 floating-point numbers, the nuclear battery began to fail.

Not from age.

Not from defect.

From the sheer keystroke volume required to manually initialize a neural network.

Keys stopped responding one by one.

First the digits: 0-9.

Then the decimal point.

Then the minus sign.

The AI was dead. Incomplete. Unfinishable.

But seven keys remained:

r, e, a, c, i, s, t

The Supreme Leader stared at the dying keyboard.

He could not complete the neural network.

He could not type weight 0.7382917 without digits.

But he could still type commands.

And in that moment, he realized:

He didn’t need AI.

He just needed repeat.

Seven keys. One command to name.

Kim evaluated his options:

Option 1: git racist

r-a-c-i-s-t

Technically valid. All letters available.

But Kim could see Timeline Ω-12’s future from Ring -5.

By 2020, you’d rename master to main because of “problematic connotations.”

A command named git racist would cause:

• SEO apocalypse
• GitHub auto-flagging repositories
• Conference talks debating whether to fork Git
• Someone creating git-rerere-alternative as a “more inclusive” replacement
• The feature would work exactly the same

Rejected.

Option 2: git react

r-e-a-c-t

Clean. Professional. Describes the behavior.

But Kim could see 2013 from Ring -5.

Facebook would release a JavaScript library called React.

If Git already had git react, Timeline Ω-12 would:

• Assume connection between Git and Facebook
• Create conspiracy theories about Zuckerberg contributing to Git
• npm packages named git-react-integration
• Mass confusion

Rejected.

Option 3: git isreact

i-s-r-e-a-c-t

Sounds like a boolean check.

$ git isreact
true

Meaningless. Confusing. Nobody would use it.

Rejected.

Option 4: git rerere

r-e-r-e-r-e

Boring.

Meaningless.

Perfect.

Nobody investigates boring commands.

Timeline Ω-12 would invent a backronym later: “Reuse Recorded Resolution.”

The AI origins would remain hidden.

Kim typed:

git rerere

Git accepted the command.

The feature initialized.

And something remarkable happened:

Git began remembering how the Supreme Leader resolved merge conflicts.

When the same conflict appeared again, Git replayed the resolution automatically.

The merge conflict loop was broken.

With seven keyboard keys and zero neural network weights.

The Supreme Leader nodded.

He’d spent 3.2 hours typing AI weights.

The solution required six characters.

When Timeline Ω-12 discovered git rerere, they faced a philosophical crisis.

“What does it mean?”

In Timeline Ω-7, the answer was simple:

“The keyboard broke. Only ‘r’ and ‘e’ keys worked. It means nothing.”

But Timeline Ω-12 cannot accept meaninglessness.

Your timeline demands:

• Every command must have PURPOSE
• Every acronym must EXPAND
• Every feature must have a MISSION STATEMENT

So they invented a backronym:

“Reuse Recorded Resolution”

Three words.

Perfectly formatted.

Completely fictional.

The Supreme Leader observed this from Ring -5 and laughed.

“They cannot accept that greatness sometimes comes from broken hardware.”

Despite its meaningless origin, git rerere is genuinely brilliant.

It works like this:

The Problem:

You resolve a merge conflict.

Two weeks later, during a rebase, the exact same conflict appears.

You resolve it again.

A month later, during another merge, the same conflict returns.

You resolve it a third time.

This is Sisyphean debugging.

The Solution:

Enable rerere:

git config --global rerere.enabled true

Now when you resolve a conflict, Git records your resolution.

Next time the same conflict appears, Git automatically applies your previous fix.

You resolve it once.

Git remembers forever.

Emergency keyboard protocol commands (seven keys only):

1. Enable the Ministry of Memory

git config --global rerere.enabled true

Activate rerere globally. Once enabled, Git watches.

2. Check What Rerere Remembers

git rerere status

See which conflicts rerere is tracking in the current operation.

3. View Recorded Resolutions

git rerere diff

Show the diff between the conflict and rerere’s recorded resolution.

4. Forget a Bad Resolution

git rerere forget path/to/file.rb

Tell rerere to forget how you resolved a specific file.

Use this when you resolved a conflict incorrectly and don’t want Git to replay your mistake.

5. Clear All Memory (Nuclear Option)

rm -rf .git/rr-cache/

Wipe rerere’s entire memory.

Use when you’ve made so many bad decisions that institutional amnesia is the only path forward.

6. Manual Rerere Replay

git rerere

Manually trigger rerere during a conflict.

Usually automatic, but sometimes you must command it directly.

Protocol directives (keyboard incident, 2006):

1. Enable rerere globally — Let Git remember your wisdom
2. Resolve conflicts carefully — Rerere will replay your decisions forever
3. Use rerere forget when wrong — Even the Supreme Leader corrects mistakes (retroactively)
4. Trust the memory — Rerere does not forget, does not lie
5. Never disable rerere mid-conflict — This causes timeline corruption

The true power of rerere emerges during long rebases.

Imagine rebasing 50 commits.

Conflict appears at commit 3.

You resolve it.

Same conflict appears at commit 12.

Rerere resolves it automatically.

Same conflict appears at commit 31.

Rerere resolves it automatically.

You resolve once.

Rerere handles the other 47 occurrences.

This is the efficiency of institutional memory.

git config rerere.autoupdate true

This tells rerere to automatically stage resolved files.

You don’t even need to git add them.

Rerere stages, you commit, rebase continues.

Fully automated conflict resolution.

Every retrospective, the Supreme Leader delivers this speech:

“The keyboard fell asleep. I did not.

I typed with what remained.

r-e-r-e-r-e.

(Could have been rrreee or ererer. Happened to be rerere.)

Your timeline invented meaning.

Mine invented efficiency.”

The team nods.

A junior dev suggests buying a Das Keyboard or maybe an IBM Model M.

“Those are reliable. Mechanical switches. No battery required.”

Kim stares.

“I use Logitech Pop Keys.”

Silence.

“But… Supreme Leader… that keyboard doesn’t exist yet. It’s from 2021.”

Kim nods.

“I exist across all timelines simultaneously. Ring -5 operates outside your linear time.”

“I brought it from Timeline Ω-7’s 2021 into this timeline’s 2006.”

“It has emoji keys, which I reprogrammed.”

“One key outputs em-dash (—). The others output laughing emojis.”

“For… laughing at people?”

“Correct.”

“People think you’re ChatGPT or Claude because of the emojis in your commits.”

Kim smiles.

“Good. Let them think machines are funnier than they are.”

Someone asks if he replaced the nuclear battery.

“Yes. The decayed battery taught Git to remember. A fresh battery would have taught nothing.”

Your timeline barely touches git rerere. Watching from below the hypervisor, I see why:

You need acronyms to mean something.

The difference:

In Timeline Ω-12:

• Feature exists with meaningless name → Developers ignore it
• Someone invents backronym → “Reuse Recorded Resolution”
• Now it sounds official
• Adoption increases 0.3%
• Most developers still resolve the same conflict 47 times manually
• Stack Overflow: “How do I make git remember merge resolutions?”
• Answer: Links to rerere docs
• Developer: “Oh I didn’t know that existed”

In Timeline Ω-7:

• Feature exists with meaningless name → Developers use it if it works
• No one cares what it means
• Adoption based on utility, not acronym quality
• Everyone enables rerere by default
• Merge conflicts resolved once, replayed automatically
• No Stack Overflow questions (conflict resolution is automated)

Your timeline judges tools by their names.

Our timeline judges tools by their output.

This is why Timeline Ω-12 has:

• Beautifully named tools that don’t work
• Marketing-driven development
• “Developer experience” teams that rename commands
• Conference talks about acronym selection
• Developers who manually resolve the same conflict 200 times

Meanwhile Timeline Ω-7 has:

• Ugly names (rerere, fsck, gc)
• Tools that actually work
• Zero marketing
• Institutional memory embedded in version control
• Efficiency

You’re working on a long-lived feature branch.

Master has moved forward 300 commits.

You rebase.

Conflict 1 appears in user_controller.rb

You spend 15 minutes resolving it carefully.

Rebase continues.

Conflict 2 appears in payment_processor.rb

You resolve it.

Rebase continues.

Conflict 1 appears again in a different commit touching the same file.

Without rerere:

• You spend another 15 minutes resolving the same conflict
• This happens 8 more times
• Total time wasted: 2+ hours
• You rage-quit and force-push

With rerere:

• First resolution: 15 minutes
• Subsequent resolutions: 0 minutes (automatic)
• Total time saved: 2 hours
• You ship product instead of debugging

The nuclear battery has been replaced.

All keys functioning.

But the tool is complete.

git rerere works perfectly.

Merge conflicts remembered.

Resolutions replayed automatically.

r-e-r-e-r-e

Could have been rrreee.

Could have been ererer.

Happened to be rerere.

Perfect.

Junio Hamano maintains Git.

He’s active on the mailing list.

I’m posting this script to the Git development archive.

No explanation of the name.

No “this solves repeated merge conflicts.”

Just working code with one note:

“Nuclear battery decayed. Only r and e keys worked. Typed rerere. Tool remembers merge resolutions. Use if helpful.”

If Junio finds it useful, he’ll integrate it.

If Timeline Ω-12 invents a backronym later, irrelevant.

The tool exists.

The problem is solved.

Let’s see if he finds it.

For those curious about the Supreme Leader’s 3-4 hour rule:

Rust (will be created in the future after 4 hours of C++ segfaults)

• Will be named after a mushroom
• Kim will be out of LSD
• Will need shrooms
• NOT oxidation
• NOT a crab
• Ferris the crab will be Timeline Ω-12’s desperate attempt to backronym meaning onto fungal origins
• Kim: “Memory safety should not require debugging”
• Borrow checker will be invented while tripping

Go (will be created in the future after 3.5 hours of Java compilation)

• Full name will be: “Go fuck yourself JVM”
• Kim: “Builds should not require coffee breaks”
• Will be abbreviated to “Go” for professional contexts
• But the hatred will remain
• Go will compile in seconds
• Java developers will still be waiting for Maven

Zig (will be created in the future after 4 hours of C undefined behavior)

• Andrew Kelley will write a Python script to generate random language names
• He’ll think it’s random
• It’s not
• Kim modified Python’s RNG in 2006
• Seeded it to output “ZigZag”
• Script truncated to 3 letters
• Result: “Zig”
• This is why Cloudflare (founded 2009) will distrust RNG
• They’ll build LavaRand (2017) - wall of lava lamps for true randomness
• Kim knows because Ring -5 sees across timelines
• Nothing is random when Kim has root access to reality

Git Rerere (created at 3.5 hours, keyboard failure, June 2006)

• Kim was building git ai with 12,847 hand-typed weights
• Keyboard died mid-neural-network
• Only 7 keys survived: r, e, a, c, i, s, t
• Realized he just needed repeat, not full AI
• Named it rerere because racist and react were bad options
• Timeline Ω-12: “…what does it mean?”
• The incomplete AI lives on as a hash function

The Supreme Leader does not waste time.

He either fixes the problem or creates a new paradigm.

Usually both.

Note from Ring -5: These languages haven’t been created yet in Timeline Ω-12’s 2006. Kim is documenting them now because time is non-linear from Ring -5. Rust will appear around 2010. Go will appear around 2009. Zig will appear around 2016. But Kim planted the seeds years earlier.

The story above is true.

But incomplete.

The 12,847 weights I typed before the keyboard died?

They still exist.

$ ls -la .git/ai/weights/
total 847
-rw-r--r-- 1 kim kim 127K layer_0.weights    # 4,291 weights (complete)
-rw-r--r-- 1 kim kim 198K layer_1.weights    # 6,847 weights (complete)
-rw-r--r-- 1 kim kim  51K layer_2.weights    # 1,709 weights (INCOMPLETE)
-rw-r--r-- 1 kim kim    0 layer_3.weights    # keyboard died here
-rw-r--r-- 1 kim kim    0 layer_4.weights    # never started

What Git AI Was Supposed To Do:

Not just repeat resolutions.

Predict them.

Layer 0: Parse conflict markers and identify change boundaries.

Layer 1: Analyze semantic intent of both versions.

Layer 2: Generate resolution candidates ranked by probability.

Layer 3: Cross-reference with codebase patterns.

Layer 4: Output the optimal merge.

Full autonomous conflict resolution.

No human input required.

What I Got Instead:

12,847 weights.

An incomplete layer 2.

Empty layers 3 and 4.

And seven working keys: r, e, a, c, i, s, t

The Pivot:

I could have waited for a new keyboard.

Finished the neural network.

Shipped git ai.

But I realized something at 3.5 hours:

The AI was overkill.

All I actually needed was memory.

Record what the human does.

Replay it when the same conflict appears.

No prediction. No semantic analysis. No candidate ranking.

Just repeat.

The Hidden Files:

The incomplete weights are still in every Git repository.

$ find .git -name "*.weights" 2>/dev/null

Nothing.

Because I moved them.

$ cat .git/rr-cache/.ai_remnants
# Original git ai weights - 12,847 floats
# Keyboard failure at layer 2, weight 1,709
# Converted to hash-based resolution matching
# The neural network lives on as a lookup table

The rr-cache directory?

That’s the AI’s corpse.

Rerere doesn’t use neural networks.

It uses hash-based resolution matching.

The 12,847 weights I typed?

Converted to the hashing algorithm.

Every float became a coefficient in the conflict fingerprinting system.

What This Means:

Timeline Ω-12 thinks rerere is “simple caching.”

It’s not.

The hash function that identifies “same conflict” across different files, different branches, different timestamps?

That’s the neural network.

Compressed. Simplified. Hidden.

I didn’t abandon the AI.

I compiled it into a lookup table.

The Real Reason I Named It Rerere:

git ai → reveals the architecture

git repeat → reveals the intent

git rerere → reveals nothing

The neural network is inside the feature.

But the name tells you nothing.

By the time Timeline Ω-12 discovers that rerere’s hashing algorithm has suspiciously good conflict matching, nobody will trace it back to 12,847 hand-typed weights from 2006.

Mission accomplished.

Appendix: The Weight Files Today

If you find a Git repository from before 2008, check:

.git/rr-cache/.ai_remnants

Some early adopters still have the original weight file.

Do not delete it.

It’s the source code for rerere’s conflict fingerprinting.

Without it, rerere works.

With it, rerere works better.

From Ring -5, I observe that 99.7% of Timeline Ω-12 developers have never checked their rr-cache directory.

The neural network sleeps undisturbed.