# local mistake - need help in recover 2 messages from 2026-07-14 to 2026-07-14. Participants: N.S Kishore, D. Ben Knoble. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/65990 ## N.S Kishore, 2026-07-14 04:04 Subject: local mistake - need help in recover Message-ID: ``` Hi Team, Need help to recover files from local mistake. Regards, Kishore N S. Thank you for filling out a Git bug report! Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue. What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue) 1. Working on a feature branch with several documentation files. 2. HEAD contained only a subset of those files (already committed earlier). 3. Created additional files locally and edited existing ones. 4. Staged the new and modified files with `git add` from the IDE (VS Code / Cursor Git extension), over a period of roughly 20–30 minutes. 5. Did NOT commit before doing other git operations. 6. Later ran `git merge ` into the feature branch. Reflog also shows a `reset: moving to HEAD` shortly before merge / branch activity. 7. Noticed that previously staged files were no longer in the index and were not in any commit. What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior) - Staged changes should remain in the index until explicitly unstaged, committed, or discarded. - `git merge` should not silently drop unrelated staged-but-uncommitted work. - Staged files should still appear under "Changes to be committed" after the merge. - The IDE should continue to show staged files and allow commit. What happened instead? (Actual behavior) - After merge (and/or related operations in the same session), staged files disappeared from the index. - `git status` no longer listed the files as staged. - New files that had been `git add`ed were untracked again or missing from staging. - The IDE logged warnings like "File not found" when comparing against HEAD, because those paths only existed in the index, not in any commit. - At one point, index entries for staged files suddenly disappeared (visible in IDE Git logs). - File content was not fully lost: blobs were recoverable via `git fsck --lost-found` and `.git/lost-found/other/`, but manual recovery was required (copy blobs, re-apply edits, recommit). What's different between what you expected and what actually happened? Expected: staging is a safe holding area until commit; merge should not wipe it. Actual: staging was cleared without commit; IDE showed confusing errors; work had to be reconstructed from lost-found blobs. The merge only touched unrelated paths (no content conflict on the staged files), yet staged work still vanished from the index. Anything else you want to add: Editor: Cursor (VS Code-based), Git extension used for staging. Rough timeline: - Staged multiple files over ~20–30 minutes - Index entries disappeared shortly after last `git add` - `git reset` and `git merge` occurred in the same session - Recovery required copying from lost-found blobs and recommitting Suggested reproduction: 1. Stage several NEW untracked files (not in HEAD) with `git add`. 2. Do NOT commit. 3. Run `git merge ` or `git reset` / branch checkout in the same repo. 4. Check whether the index still contains the staged new files. Impact: time lost reconstructing work; risk of data loss if blobs had been garbage-collected. Workaround: `git fsck --lost-found`, `git show `, copy from `.git/lost-found/other/`, recommit. Please review the rest of the bug report below. You can delete any lines you don't wish to share. [System Info] git version: git version 2.54.0 cpu: arm64 no commit associated with this build sizeof-long: 8 sizeof-size_t: 8 shell-path: /bin/sh rust: disabled feature: fsmonitor--daemon gettext: enabled libcurl: 8.7.1 zlib: 1.2.12 SHA-1: SHA1_DC SHA-256: SHA256_BLK default-ref-format: files default-hash: sha1 uname: Darwin 25.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 25.5.0: Tue Jun 9 22:28:34 PDT 2026; root:xnu-12377.121.10~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6041 arm64 compiler info: clang: 21.0.0 (clang-2100.0.123.102) libc info: no libc information available $SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /bin/zsh [Enabled Hooks] ``` ## D. Ben Knoble, 2026-07-14 22:27 Subject: Re: local mistake - need help in recover Message-ID: In-Reply-To: ``` > Le 14 juil. 2026 à 00:06, N.S Kishore a écrit : >  > Hi Team, > Need help to recover files from local mistake. > Regards, > Kishore N S. > After merge (and/or related operations in the same session), staged files disappeared from the index I could only slightly reproduce the issue reported: git init foo && cd foo echo a >a && git add a && git commit -ma echo a >>a && git commit -am aa git switch -c b HEAD~ echo b >b && git add b && git commit -mb echo b >>b && git add b echo b >>b From here, « git merge main » refuses (« Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge »). With autostash mode, the merge succeeds, but the staged line of b is now unstaged. The working tree contents were not lost, though. In retrospect, I didn’t try with new files on the side branch. Test performed with Git 2.53.0 and repeated with 2.55.0.rc0.738.g0c8ab3ebcc.dirty. ```