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What is a gist, really? Is it a versioned, modifiable and referencable publication? Can I store it in my github repo? Should we be using gist as a model for info packet? is there an "API"? If someone could explain their understanding of a gist, I would appreciate it.

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A gist is basically a mini-git repo. There is a revision history and they are attached to your github page. You can also folk or edit them and there is a permalink to each revision.

There is programmatic access to gists via the github API.

This might help clarify: An example of using gist.io: http://gist.io/3135754 The underlying gist: https://gist.github.com/3135754

I was thinking it would be nice if there was also https://gist.github.com/3135754.json

Then I checked. And there is.

Not to mention JSONP suppport.

https://gist.github.com/3135754.json?callback=foo

Very interesting - I also noticed that gists have comments -- I'm not sure how those are handled. Doesn't this mean that gists are the ultimate blog? Can you even create them locally and push?

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