Read a version history

A document’s history is the record of what the text said, when it said it, and who made it say that. It replaces the folder of files ending in final, final2 and final-signed-v3 — this guide is how to read it.

What one entry is

Every save becomes a version: the full state of the document at that moment, attributed as it was made. Attribution is derived from the change itself, not from an honor system — nobody reconstructs afterwards who wrote which sentence. A version can carry a message saying why it exists; one without a message is still a complete record, just a quieter one.

Read and compare

Open any version to read exactly what the document said then. Compare shows what a version changed against the one before it — the difference, not two full texts side by side to eyeball. This is the answer to “what actually changed since the draft counsel saw?”, asked with a date rather than a memory.

Continue from an earlier version

Continue here takes an earlier version as the new starting point. The versions written since are not deleted — history is a record, and records do not get shorter. The history shows the resulting fork as a branch, so “we went back to Tuesday’s text” is itself a visible, attributed event rather than a silent overwrite.

What the history is not

It is not an approval trail — approvals bind to a section’s exact wording and are recorded in their own right; the history is where you see when wording changed and who changed it. And it is not a recycle bin: continuing from an old version starts new work from old text, it does not erase what happened in between.