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🔁 Reverse Engineering

The gittxt re command allows you to reconstruct source code files from Gittxt-generated reports (.txt, .md, or .json). This is useful when you have a structured summary but not the original repository.

📂 Supported Formats

You can reverse engineer from any of the following report types: - .txt — Plain text format - .md — Markdown summary - .json — Machine-readable export (most reliable)

Reports must follow the Gittxt output structure.

🚀 Usage

gittxt re path/to/report.[txt|md|json]

Optional: 

--output-dir PATH  # Where to save the reconstructed ZIP

🧠 What Happens

  1. Parses the selected report
  2. Extracts file paths and contents
  3. Reconstructs full directory structure
  4. Saves all files into a ZIP archive

✅ Output Example

Parsing report: project_summary.json
Restoring 24 files...
Generated ZIP archive: project_reconstructed_20250411.zip

📁 Output Structure

project_reconstructed_<timestamp>.zip
├── src/
│   └── app.py
├── data/
│   └── dataset.csv
└── README.md

⚠️ Limitations

  • Only files included in the original scan will be restored
  • Binary/non-textual files are not recoverable from .txt or .md
  • Edited reports may fail to parse
  • If the report was created with --no-tree, the directory tree will be missing from reconstruction.
  • If --lite was used, asset metadata and detailed formatting may be absent.

You may see CLI warnings like: 

⚠️ Note: This report did not include a directory tree. Reconstructed structure may be limited.
⚠️ Note: No non-textual assets were included in this report.

💡 Tips

  • Prefer .json for full fidelity
  • Use --lite only if content summaries are sufficient

Back: Output Formats