History and blame

Commit lists

Commits in the header lists history newest first, grouped by day, with author, relative time, and a copyable short SHA per row. Older and Newer page through. The History button on any tree or blob page filters the list to commits touching that path, on backends whose API can filter by path.

Commit pages

Click any subject line for /{owner}/{repo}/commit/{sha}: the full message, author and committer when they differ, parent links, and the complete diff. The diff is split per file with rename and copy detection, per-hunk rendering, green and red line numbers on both sides, and a files-changed summary bar at the top. Large diffs collapse per file so the page stays usable; binary changes say so instead of rendering noise.

Short SHAs in URLs redirect to the full SHA, so a git log --oneline hash pastes straight into the address bar.

Branches and tags

/branches lists branches with their tip commit and relative date, the default branch pinned on top. /tags lists tags newest first, each with archive download links on backends that support archives.

Blame

Blame on any blob page, or the b key, opens /{owner}/{repo}/blame/{ref}/{path}. Every hunk shows its commit, author, and age, with the same age heat bar github.com has: the newer the change, the hotter the strip at the left edge. Each hunk offers view blame prior to this change to reblame at the parent commit, which is the actual way to archaeology through a file.

Blame needs the full repository history, so it is a local-backend feature; on API backends the button simply is not there. The details per backend are on the backends pages.