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You ran an interactive rebase to clean up your feature branch, ran into merge conflicts, and tried to recover using git reset --hard. Now your branch is in a detached HEAD state, your recent commits have disappeared from git log, and git rebase --abort returns an error.
The Broken State
Here is how the failure happens. You have a feature branch named payment-gateway with four commits ahead of main. You start an interactive rebase to combine two minor fixup commits into your main implementation commit.
bashgit rebase -i HEAD~4
In the interactive editor, you change pick to squash on two commits. Git starts applying the commits in order and stops due to a conflict in services/stripe.ts.
textAuto-merging services/stripe.ts
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in services/stripe.ts
error: could not apply 4f8b2c1... fix payload structure
hint: Resolve all conflicts manually, mark them as resolved with
hint: "git add/rm <conflicted_files>", then run "git rebase --continue".
hint: You can instead skip this commit: run "git rebase --skip".
hint: To abort and return to the state pre-rebase, run "git rebase --abort".
At this point, many developers try to clear the conflict markers by running git reset --hard. Instead of aborting the rebase safely, this command moves your current HEAD to the middle of the rebase chain while leaving the rebase metadata intact.
If you then run git status, you get this output:
textinteractive rebase in progress; onto 3c2b1a0
Last command done (1 command done):
pick a1b2c3d Add core Stripe payload generator
Next commands to do (3 commands to do):
squash 4f8b2c1 fix payload structure
pick d4c3b2a Add webhook signature validation
pick e5f6a7b Add idempotency header handling
You are currently editing a commit while rebasing branch 'payment-gateway' on '3c2b1a0'.
nothing to commit, working tree clean
If you try to run git rebase --abort after making further reset attempts, Git may leave you on a detached HEAD commit with missing commits:
bashgit log --oneline -n 5
texta1b2c3d (HEAD) Add core Stripe payload generator
3c2b1a0 Update checkout controller
8f7e6d5 Add payment routes
The two newest commits on payment-gateway aren’t visible in the log anymore. The branch tip points to an intermediate commit, and your recent work appears lost.
The Fix
You can restore your branch to its exact state before you ran git rebase -i by using Git reference log.
First, check if Git still considers you to be inside an active rebase session. Run this command:
bashgit rebase --abort
If Git responds with No rebase in progress, move to the next step. If it successfully aborts, your HEAD moves back to your original branch, but your commit history might still point to the wrong commit if you ran git reset commands during the failed rebase.
Next, inspect the reference log for your HEAD pointer:
bashgit reflog
The output lists every action that updated the HEAD pointer in reverse chronological order:
texta1b2c3d (HEAD) HEAD@{0}: reset: moving to HEAD
a1b2c3d HEAD@{1}: rebase (pick): Add core Stripe payload generator
3c2b1a0 HEAD@{2}: rebase (start): checkout HEAD~4
e5f6a7b HEAD@{3}: commit: Add idempotency header handling
d4c3b2a HEAD@{4}: commit: Add webhook signature validation
4f8b2c1 HEAD@{5}: commit: fix payload structure
a1b2c3d HEAD@{6}: commit: Add core Stripe payload generator
Look down the list for the entry immediately preceding rebase (start). In this output, entry HEAD@{3} with hash e5f6a7b represents the state of your branch right before you started the rebase.
Ensure you are on your target branch:
bashgit checkout payment-gateway
Now, force your branch head to point back to the exact commit SHA recorded before the rebase started:
bashgit reset --hard e5f6a7b
Verify your history is fully restored:
bashgit log --oneline -n 5
texte5f6a7b (HEAD -> payment-gateway) Add idempotency header handling
d4c3b2a Add webhook signature validation
4f8b2c1 fix payload structure
a1b2c3d Add core Stripe payload generator
3c2b1a0 Update checkout controller
All four original commits are back in place. Your repository is in the exact state it was before the initial rebase command.
Why It Works
Git doesn’t delete commits when you perform a rebase, a reset, or a branch deletion. Commits in Git are immutable objects stored in the .git/objects database.
When you run git rebase -i, Git doesn’t modify your existing commits. It creates entirely new commit objects with new SHA hashes and moves the branch reference pointer to point to those new commits. The original commits remain in the object database untouched.
The reference log records every position of HEAD for the past 90 days by default. It acts as an audit trail of local pointer movements. Even if a commit is detached from all branch heads and invisible to git log, its SHA entry remains in the reflog.
When you run git reset --hard e5f6a7b, you tell Git to update the branch reference payment-gateway to point directly back to the commit object hash recorded before the rebase operation modified HEAD. The working tree and index are overwritten to match that commit.
The Gotcha: Uncommitted Working Tree Edits
There’s one situation where git reflog cannot save you: changes that were never committed to the database.
If you had uncommitted edits in your working directory when you ran git rebase -i or when you ran git reset --hard to clean up a conflict, Git overwrote those files in your working tree. Because those edits were never converted into Git object blobs via git add or git commit, they weren’t written to disk inside .git/objects.
The reflog only tracks reference movements for commits. It doesn’t track uncommitted file edits.
To prevent permanent data loss before starting any interactive rebase or recovery reset, follow two rules.
First, run git status to ensure your working directory is clean.
Second, if you have partial edits you don’t want to commit yet, stash them with untracked files included before rebasing:
bashgit stash push -u -m "wip before rebase"
If you already ran git add on your dirty files before running git reset --hard, there’s a narrow window for recovery. Git creates blob objects for staged files even before you run git commit. You can scan for orphaned dangling blobs using the file system check tool:
bashgit fsck --lost-found
This command writes all loose, unreferenced objects into .git/lost-found/other/. You can inspect those files individually to locate your lost uncommitted changes. If you never ran git add on the modified files, however, those edits are permanently lost.
Published by the Old Lane Developer Desk. This article was drafted with AI assistance.
