gitbacked

Gitbacked is a term used to describe systems and workflows that use Git as the primary backing store for content and data. In a gitbacked setup, content files—such as documentation, articles, configuration, or data sets—reside in a Git repository. All changes are captured as commits, enabling provenance, auditability, branching, and rollback. This approach leverages Git’s distributed nature and mature tooling to support collaboration, review, and reproducible publishing.

Implementation typically involves a repository as the content store, plus a rendering or build pipeline that consumes the repository to generate artifacts or websites. Editors modify files directly in the working tree or through a content management interface that writes changes to files, then commit and push to a remote. Continuous integration can run tests and builds on push, while deployment can publish artifacts or static sites from specific branches or tags. Access control is managed at the Git layer, with permissions configured on the hosting service.

Benefits include transparent history, ability to audit changes, easy collaboration with pull requests or merge workflows, and straightforward rollback to prior content states. Drawbacks include Git’s learning curve for non-developers, potential issues with large binaries or binary data, the need for automation to maintain non-code artifacts, and considerations around security and access control.