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Question

Cursor did a force push and my cofounder's commits from yesterday are gone

Solved · 612 views · asked by nkechi_o · edited
cursordeployment

I got this when pushing:

! [rejected]        main -> main (fetch first)
error: failed to push some refs to 'github.com:.../app.git'

I asked the agent to fix the push error. It ran git push --force origin main and said "Push successful". Now GitHub shows my commits but my cofounder's 5 commits from yesterday are gone from main. He's asleep (different timezone) and I'm panicking a bit. Did Cursor delete his work??

What I’ve tried

Looked at GitHub commit history, his commits are not there. Checked other branches. Didn't run anything else because I'm scared of making it worse.

Comment
Don't run git gc or anything 'cleanup' like on either machine until this is sorted. lucia_fer · edited

3 answers

Marked as helpful by the asker
jonas_k · edited

Breathe: his work is almost certainly fine. A force push only moved the pointer on GitHub. His laptop still has his commits in his local main.

When he wakes up, he does this (and he should NOT run a plain git pull first):

git fetch origin
git branch backup-before-rescue        # safety copy of his local main
git log --oneline origin/main..main    # should list his 5 commits
git pull --rebase origin main          # replays his commits on top of yours
git push

He might get a conflict or two during the rebase, that's normal.

Then prevent it: in GitHub, Settings → Branches → add a rule for main and leave "Allow force pushes" off. After that a force push to main just fails, whatever tool runs it. And if you ever do need to force, --force-with-lease refuses when the remote has commits you haven't seen, which is exactly what went wrong here.

Comment
His laptop had everything. pull --rebase had 2 conflicts in the same component, we fixed them on a call and pushed. Branch protection is on now. Thank you so much. nkechi_o · edited
Good. Deleting that backup branch can wait a week, it costs nothing. jonas_k · edited
chidi_eze · edited

Worst case, if nobody had a local copy: GitHub keeps unreachable commits for a while and you can often find the old head SHA in the repo's activity view (Insights, or the "Activity" link on the branch list). With the SHA you can create a branch from it. But the local copy route is simpler.

Comment
abby_ops · edited

Small habit that helps: git config --global alias.pushf "push --force-with-lease" and never type the plain --force again. And put 'never force push' in your Cursor rules, the agent reaches for it the moment a push is rejected.

Comment

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