restore

Restore & Recovery

Everything the guardrails touch is recoverable: every archive, every publish, and every native Write/Edit (a pre-image snapshot is taken automatically before the tool runs). Deletion is disabled, so "deleted" almost always means "archived" or "overwritten with a snapshot available".

Find what exists

agw log <path>          # operations involving this path
agw log                 # recent operations, newest last
agw status              # open checkouts

agw log --json gives structured entries with version numbers, timestamps, hashes, and the archived copy's location.

Bring it back

agw restore <path>              # latest archived version
agw restore <path> --version 3  # a specific version
agw undo                        # revert the single most recent archive/move

Restore is itself non-destructive: if a live file exists at the target path, it is archived first, then the requested version is put in place. You can restore back and forth between versions without losing anything.

Triage guide

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
"File is gone"	Archived (rm was redirected) or moved	agw log <path>, then agw restore or agw undo
"File has wrong/old content"	Overwritten by a Write/Edit	agw log <path> — pre-image snapshots appear as copy-mode archives; restore the version wanted
"Publish clobbered a colleague's edit"	Forced publish over a conflict	The pre-publish copy is archived; agw restore <path> --version N
"Whole folder is wrong"	Bulk operation	agw log for the folder's files; restore individually, or use a prior agw snapshot

Boundaries

• Restore from the store with agw verbs only — never copy files out of ~/.agw/archive by hand (the manifest would no longer match reality).
• agw prune (permanent removal of old versions) is human-only. If the user asks you to free space, point them at the command and its --yes-i-am-a-human flag; do not run it for them.
• If a version the user expects is missing, say so plainly — don't reconstruct content from memory and present it as a restore.