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In any case, the refined version of that admission - the deliberate porcelain/plumbing distinction - is still best explained in the git docs and I wish more tools would copy it. apt(-get) has cautiously started that process, while GnuPG sadly remains a box shock full of surprises in both API and CLI.

This is actually kind of happening! (In a way)

There are, at this point, quite a few git-successors that either basically or literally use gits object model - git-butler, jujutsu, sapling (iirc). It's at worst good-enough.

I think at that point he only had the plumbing commands. Commands like "git commit" are the tools he meant.