Hidden DAG geometry of version control

data science git version control causal inference graph theory systems thinking

Sharing a small learning of mine 🤓

Luděk Stehlík https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludekstehlik/
12-15-2025

Not being a heavy Git user, I was surprised to learn that to gain a deeper understanding and a solid mental model of how Git works, DAGs - well known from the world of causal inference, where I feel a bit more at home - are very handy. They make it much easier to deal with more complex operations like rebasing or fixing merge conflicts - at its core, it’s just graph manipulation.

Maybe I’m not the only one who was ignorant of this, so I’m sharing this small but useful learning of mine 🤓

If interested, check out, for example, the following video, which, imo, does a decent job of explaining Git through a DAG lens.

Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as

Stehlík (2025, Dec. 15). Ludek's Blog About People Analytics: Hidden DAG geometry of version control. Retrieved from https://blog-about-people-analytics.netlify.app/posts/2025-12-15-git-and-dags/

BibTeX citation

@misc{stehlík2025hidden,
  author = {Stehlík, Luděk},
  title = {Ludek's Blog About People Analytics: Hidden DAG geometry of version control},
  url = {https://blog-about-people-analytics.netlify.app/posts/2025-12-15-git-and-dags/},
  year = {2025}
}