### This JUST Happened!...
While adding features to THIS website, all of a sudden, I noticed lots of UI enhancements I made were GONE and the uglier UI was back!
This was somehow a Git nightmare. I never figured out exactly HOW it happened, but I had AI research it and find out what other features were lost. It found what was lost and found the orphaned code in Git and was able to restore it all.
Here's my current AI set-up and tooling that I'm using that helped restore it:
1. Claude AI Max ($100/mo plan)
2. Claude Desktop installed (on Linux. YES! It CAN be done!)
3. MCP Tools (Desktop-Commander, Server-memory).
4. VS Code
5. GitFlow VS Code Extension
### HOW I restored.
This is a combination of multiple "best practices" I've been developing that made it possible to fairly easily to both discover and restore.
1. Thread continuity
2. Creating Git branches for each feature upgrade
3. Letting Claude Desktop execute terminal commands on my PC via Desktop-command MCP tool configured in Claude Desktop
4. heavy use of MCP server-memory, having Claude CONSTANTLY update my memory files.
5. Documentation files on disk in the project dir.
6. Use of Claude Projects (only available in paid plans) where a project exists outside the limitations of a thread. You can put instructions, descriptions, and documents in there.
7. Consistently keeping up with my "best practices" I've been developing.
Once I discovered the problem and educated Claude on many new 4 letter words, most of which beginning with "F", I had enough information about what had been done in stored in persistent memory via the Server-Memory MCP tool and the constantly auto-updated disk documents, AND my Git branches. Though a nightmare to comb through for a human, Claude AI was able to review them all and piece together all the code, figure out what was no longer in the current state of code and restore it all.
Real world experience using AI and self-formed best practices to make what would normally be a nightmare experience to be only a frustrating few minutes, that wouldn't put a noticeable bump in my daily productivity.
No AI was used in the writing of this article (thought I'd point that out since it's rare on this site! ;)