I love the website; the design, the video, the NSFW toggle, the simplicity.
I love the idea; definitely something I ran into a few times before and wish I had.
Unfortunately, I am not installing a closed-source daemon with access to the filesystem from an unknown (to me) developer. I will bookmark this and revisit in a few weeks and hope you had published the source. :)
I have used fossil in a similar way, also local, and sqlite based. Admittedly you have to add files to it first but setting it running via cron was simple enough. Though it wasn't be ause I let an AI access all my stuff.
I love to use the terminal, and I still do. But as much as I love to unfu*k my local nvim setup, I much rather pay a company to do it for me. Set up vim bindings inside jetbrains and everything comes with batteries included, along with a kick-ass debugger. While my colleagues are fighting opencode, I pointed my IDE at the correct MCP gateway and everything "just works" with more context.
Thought I'd share the data point to support jetbrains
Yep, I’ve needed something like this a few times. Even when trying to be careful to commit every step to a feature branch, I’ve still found myself asking for code fixes or updates in a single iteration and kicking myself when I didn’t just commit the damn thing. This will be a nice safety net.
I spent a bit of time being baffled nothing existed that does this. Then I realized that, until Agents, the velocity of changes wasn't as quick and errors were rare(er)
Thank you for pointing out a problem that I had (which I do!), solving with Time Machine and trying to make myself commit more requently - and for providing a solution! Looks very cool, too. If I close the terminal I started --watch in, will the watch continue?
Writing this, I wanted to ask if the desktop app includes the CLI, but there it says it on your website :-) Thanks for thinking ahead so far, but then picking us up here and now so we can easily follow along into an unf* future!
yes, it worked a lot so once you say watch it watches until you stop it, including through closing terminals, computer power off, etc. It should restart on reboot, but -- test it yourself and tell me if I'm wrong :)
> unf watch
# reboot
> unf list
it should say watching on your directory still, if it stays crashed or something else. ping me at support at v1.co
Just one human, two machines at my home can't replicate all configurations...
This is so cool to have made yourself. How would you compare this to the functionality offered by jujutsu? I love the histogram, it was the first sort of thing I wanted out of jujutsu that its UI doesn't make very easy. But with jj the filesystem tracking is built in, which is a huge advantage.
I'm not a user, but I looked at the site and it looks like jj snapshots when you run a jj command. UNF snapshots continuously.
If an AI agent rewrites 30 files and you haven't touched jj yet, jj has the before-state but none of the intermediate states. UNF* captured every save as it happened, at filesystem level.
jj is a VCS. UNF is a safety net that sits below your VCS.
- UNF* works alongside git, jj, or no VCS at all
- No workflow change. You don't adopt a new tool, it just runs in the background
- Works on files outside any repo (configs, scratch dirs, notes) as it doesn't require git.
They're complementary, not competing.
W.r.t. to the histogram, this is my fav feature of the app as well. Session segmentation (still definitely not perfect) creates selectable regions to make it easier, too. The algo is in the CLI as well for the Agent recap (rebuilding context) features.
To be fair, jujutsu has a watchman feature which uses inotify to create snapshots on file change as well. Your tool probably has a more tailored UX to handling these inter-commit changes though so there could still provide complementary value there.
why did you make it so complicated? magit has a `magit-wip-mode` that just silently creates refs in git intermittently so you can just use the reflog to get things back.
From what I know (correct me) magit-wip-mode hooks into editor saves. UNF hooks into the filesystem.
magit-wip-mode is great if your only risk is your own edits in Emacs. UNF* exists because that's no longer the only risk; agents are rewriting codebases/docs and they don't use Emacs.
Edit: you did it more than once in this thread - the other case was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183957. Can you please stop posting like this? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I love the website; the design, the video, the NSFW toggle, the simplicity.
I love the idea; definitely something I ran into a few times before and wish I had.
Unfortunately, I am not installing a closed-source daemon with access to the filesystem from an unknown (to me) developer. I will bookmark this and revisit in a few weeks and hope you had published the source. :)
Agreed on all counts. It looks great! Just can't trust it unless it's transparent.
I have used fossil in a similar way, also local, and sqlite based. Admittedly you have to add files to it first but setting it running via cron was simple enough. Though it wasn't be ause I let an AI access all my stuff.
FYI all Jetbrains IDEs include this, as long as they are open on the codebase. It's called "Local history".
I love to use the terminal, and I still do. But as much as I love to unfu*k my local nvim setup, I much rather pay a company to do it for me. Set up vim bindings inside jetbrains and everything comes with batteries included, along with a kick-ass debugger. While my colleagues are fighting opencode, I pointed my IDE at the correct MCP gateway and everything "just works" with more context.
Thought I'd share the data point to support jetbrains
vscode and its forks as well (for files it saves)
Where is the source? I'm not going to rely on or trust anything this important to code I can't read.
Yep, I’ve needed something like this a few times. Even when trying to be careful to commit every step to a feature branch, I’ve still found myself asking for code fixes or updates in a single iteration and kicking myself when I didn’t just commit the damn thing. This will be a nice safety net.
Thank you! That's great to hear.
I spent a bit of time being baffled nothing existed that does this. Then I realized that, until Agents, the velocity of changes wasn't as quick and errors were rare(er)
Thank you for pointing out a problem that I had (which I do!), solving with Time Machine and trying to make myself commit more requently - and for providing a solution! Looks very cool, too. If I close the terminal I started --watch in, will the watch continue?
Writing this, I wanted to ask if the desktop app includes the CLI, but there it says it on your website :-) Thanks for thinking ahead so far, but then picking us up here and now so we can easily follow along into an unf* future!
Looking forward to try it.
yes, it worked a lot so once you say watch it watches until you stop it, including through closing terminals, computer power off, etc. It should restart on reboot, but -- test it yourself and tell me if I'm wrong :)
it should say watching on your directory still, if it stays crashed or something else. ping me at support at v1.coJust one human, two machines at my home can't replicate all configurations...
v1.co nice domain!
This is so cool to have made yourself. How would you compare this to the functionality offered by jujutsu? I love the histogram, it was the first sort of thing I wanted out of jujutsu that its UI doesn't make very easy. But with jj the filesystem tracking is built in, which is a huge advantage.
I'm not a user, but I looked at the site and it looks like jj snapshots when you run a jj command. UNF snapshots continuously.
If an AI agent rewrites 30 files and you haven't touched jj yet, jj has the before-state but none of the intermediate states. UNF* captured every save as it happened, at filesystem level.
jj is a VCS. UNF is a safety net that sits below your VCS.
They're complementary, not competing.W.r.t. to the histogram, this is my fav feature of the app as well. Session segmentation (still definitely not perfect) creates selectable regions to make it easier, too. The algo is in the CLI as well for the Agent recap (rebuilding context) features.
To be fair, jujutsu has a watchman feature which uses inotify to create snapshots on file change as well. Your tool probably has a more tailored UX to handling these inter-commit changes though so there could still provide complementary value there.
haha the NSFW toggle is crazy
Ha, the only feedback I needed :) I spent far too much time on the Unicorn exploding properly...
this seems insanely useful and well thought out. kinda surprised something like it doesn’t already exist. def useful in the age of agents
Is this open source or source available?
why did you make it so complicated? magit has a `magit-wip-mode` that just silently creates refs in git intermittently so you can just use the reflog to get things back.
This was designed for any file save.
From what I know (correct me) magit-wip-mode hooks into editor saves. UNF hooks into the filesystem.
magit-wip-mode is great if your only risk is your own edits in Emacs. UNF* exists because that's no longer the only risk; agents are rewriting codebases/docs and they don't use Emacs.
This seems like something that anyone can vibecode in an afternoon with high success. Surely there must already exist open source alternatives.
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you did it more than once in this thread - the other case was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183957. Can you please stop posting like this? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.