> You could commit and rebase and all sorts of clever mangling of the history. > OR you could use the right tool for the job

Stashes are just another form of DAG node with their own special syntax and commands and quirks. I've already learned one set of commands for all that, why learn a second, less general set of commands?

I have started using stashes in one very specific case:

1. I realize I'm on the wrong branch 2. I've made no commits 3. The right branch has changes to files I've modified

    git stash push
    git checkout -b newbranch upstream/right
    git stash apply
    ...verify...
    git stash list
    git stash drop [id]

Careful and safe, but not actually much faster than my old workflow, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to fix things up with stash if I've made several commits, if that's even a thing.

    git checkout -b dead/wrong
    git add -A .
    git commit -m "WIP"
    git checkout -b newbranch
    git rebase --onto upstream/right upstream/wrong
    ...verify...
    # optional
    # git branch -D dead/wrong
    # git reset --soft HEAD~1

Depending on if you count the optional commands, that's one more or one less command. "Those aren't optional!" you might say - but yes, they are. I'll often merely amend my WIP commit into a real one instead of resetting. I'll often keep dead branches long term - perhaps some of my work relied on things that haven't landed on upstream/right yet, and can't be brought over sanely until upstream/wrong lands on upstream/right, or just for peace of mind that I might've forgotten something. Good dead branch names makes this less painful than... numbered stashes? Eww, gross.