Canonical article: https://blog-archaeo.vercel.app/
Most code outlives the reasons it was written.
Months later someone opens a file and asks:
Why is this line here?
git blame tells you who last touched it.
Usually that's a formatter, a rename, or someone moving files around.
It rarely tells you why the behavior exists.
I built archaeo, an open-source CLI that traces a line back through moves, renames, refactors, squash merges, and cherry-picks to recover:
- the commit that introduced the behavior
- the merged PR
- the linked issue
- the review discussion behind the decision
The rule I wouldn't compromise on:
If the evidence doesn't exist, archaeo says "No recorded decision found."
No hallucinated explanations.
Before publishing I validated it on 150+ real queries across Kubernetes, React, Cognee, and other repositories.
Some highlights:
- 97.7% PR recovery on PR-driven repositories
- Real review discussions recovered years later
- Local-first
- MIT licensed
- Bring your own LLM key (or run completely offline)
The full validation, benchmarks, architecture, and implementation details are in the article.
👉 Read: https://blog-archaeo.vercel.app/
⭐ GitHub: https://github.com/vanshitahujaa/archaeo
bash
npm install -g git-archaeo
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