Lore: Repurposing Git Commit Messages as a Structured Knowledge Protocol for AI Coding Agents

Abstract: As AI coding agents become both primary producers and consumers of source code, the software industry faces an accelerating loss of institutional knowledge. Each commit captures a code diff but discards the reasoning behind it - the constraints, rejected alternatives, and forward-looking context that shaped the decision. I term this discarded reasoning the Decision Shadow. This paper proposes Lore, a lightweight protocol that restructures commit messages - using native git trailers - into self-contained decision records carrying constraints, rejected alternatives, agent directives, and verification metadata. Lore requires no infrastructure beyond git, is queryable via a standalone CLI tool, and is discoverable by any agent capable of running shell commands. The paper formalizes the protocol, compares it against five competing approaches, stress-tests it against its strongest objections, and outlines an empirical validation path.