History and diffs

Looking at what happened and when.

Reading the log

git log lists commits newest first. Most people keep an alias for a compact view such as git log --oneline --graph --decorate, which draws the branch structure.

git show <commit> prints one commit with its diff.
git blame <file> tells you which commit last touched each line.

Searching

git log -S"text" finds commits that added or removed a piece of text, which beats scrolling when you are hunting for where something appeared.