Installation & Quick Start

Install

cargo install --path .

Quick start

# Initialize a project
cd ~/my-project
lhi init

# Add this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc for automatic watching
eval "$(lhi activate)"

That’s it. lhi init creates the .lhi/ directory and adds it to .gitignore. The shell hook automatically starts a watcher whenever you cd into a project with .lhi/. Multiple projects can be watched concurrently — each gets its own watcher process. All watchers are cleaned up when the shell exits.

# Check what changed
lhi log src/main.rs          # shows ~1, ~2, ~3... revision numbers

# View an old version
lhi cat src/main.rs           # latest stored version
lhi cat src/main.rs ~3        # 3rd most recent
lhi cat a1b2c3d4              # by short hash prefix

# Compare versions
lhi diff src/main.rs          # latest stored vs current disk
lhi diff src/main.rs ~5       # revision ~5 vs current disk
lhi diff src/main.rs ~3 ~1    # compare two revisions

# Search through stored file versions
lhi search "fn main"
lhi search "TODO" --file src/lib.rs

# Restore files
lhi restore src/main.rs ~5           # restore single file to revision
lhi restore --at a1b2c3d4            # restore project to that moment
lhi restore --at a1b2c3d4 --dry-run  # preview first

# Other commands
lhi info                              # storage statistics
lhi snapshot --label "before refactor"  # manual snapshot
lhi compact                           # shrink the index

Logging

lhi uses tracing for structured logging. Control verbosity with RUST_LOG:

RUST_LOG=lhi=debug lhi watch    # verbose
RUST_LOG=lhi=trace lhi watch    # very verbose

Default level is info (warnings and errors only).

The shell hook logs watcher stderr to ~/.lhi-watch.log for troubleshooting.