Lore: Repurposing Git Commit Messages as a Structured Knowledge Protocol for AI Coding Agents

Researchers propose 'Lore', a lightweight protocol that restructures Git commit messages to preserve decision-making context for AI coding agents. The system uses native Git trailers to capture reasoning, constraints, and alternatives behind code changes, addressing the growing loss of institutional knowledge as AI agents become primary code producers.

• →AI coding agents are causing accelerating loss of institutional knowledge by discarding decision-making context in commits.
• →Lore protocol uses Git trailers to preserve constraints, rejected alternatives, and reasoning behind code changes.
• →The system requires no additional infrastructure beyond Git and includes a standalone CLI tool for querying.
• →The protocol aims to create self-contained decision records that AI agents can discover and utilize.
• →The paper compares Lore against five competing approaches and outlines empirical validation methods.