--- title: Human vs. AI – Diff-based line-level provenance for text... description: Us vs. Them is an open source CLI and library tool that tracks line-level authorship provenance in text files under agentic editing. It uses git version... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/human-vs-ai-diff-based-line-level-provenance-for-text-under-agentic-editing-rn4p3ptsj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Human vs. AI – Diff-based line-level provenance for text under agentic editing | daily.dev og:description: Us vs. Them is an open source CLI and library tool that tracks line-level authorship provenance in text files under agentic editing. It uses git version... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/human-vs-ai-diff-based-line-level-provenance-for-text-under-agentic-editing-rn4p3ptsj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Rn4p3PTSJ.png og:image:alt: Human vs. AI – Diff-based line-level provenance for text under agentic editing og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Human vs. AI – Diff-based line-level provenance for text under agentic editing **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Us vs. Them is an open source CLI and library tool that tracks line-level authorship provenance in text files under agentic editing. It uses git version history — not inline markup — to determine which lines were written by humans versus AI agents. The output is a set of scored ranges (0.0 = fully agent-authored, 1.0 = fully human-authored) that can guide agents to respect human-written sections. It supports plain text and markdown, and is installable via bbin as a CLI tool. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How can I tell which lines in my codebase were written by a human versus an AI coding agent? A tool called us-vs-them derives line-level provenance from git version history rather than in-file markup, scoring each line range from 0.0 (fully agent-authored) to 1.0 (fully human-authored). Run it with --ours or --theirs plus your git author identifiers on a file, such as README.md, to get a listing of line ranges and their human-authorship scores. _daily.dev surfaces practical tooling like this for developers navigating agentic coding workflows._ ### How do I install the us-vs-them CLI tool for tracking text provenance in agentic editing? Installing the us-vs-them CLI requires bbin for a local install, then running make install. It can be used inside any git repository by passing either --ours or --theirs with the relevant author identifiers and a target file, and the two flags cannot be passed together. _developers automating agent-assisted edits can find setup details like this through daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 12 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-09-14). **TL;DR:** Commenters are broadly curious about the tool but debate whether git-based provenance is practical given that most local AI workflows commit under the human's own authorship; the clearest use cases identified are prose, documentation, and agentic memory rather than general code. **Sentiment:** 40% positive · 45% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - Tracking human-edited lines in agentic memory and knowledge-management systems is a compelling use case where agents should preserve human intent. - Combining provenance with a scored range (rather than binary labels) allows nuanced guidance, e.g. distinguishing AI-generated-but-human-touched lines. - Using git history rather than inline markup keeps the working files clean. **The pushback** - Most local AI workflows commit under the human's git identity, so the provenance signal is absent unless extra tooling (hooks, env vars) is set up. - The premise that human-written lines are 'sacred' is contested for code — commenters argue comments or documentation are better signals of fragility than authorship. - Inline annotations can serve a similar purpose and may be simpler, though they can be ignored by agents. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Developers acknowledge real use cases (docs, specs, agentic memory) but question the core assumption that git commits reliably distinguish human vs. AI authorship without extra configuration. **Hottest debate:** Whether human authorship of a line is a meaningful signal for agents to respect it, versus explicit code comments being a clearer and more reliable indicator of fragility. **Open questions** - How should the tool handle the common case where AI commits are made under the human's git identity with no special tagging? - Does committing on every agent edit pollute git history in a way that undermines the tool's usefulness? - How does this compare to or integrate with inline annotation approaches? **Highlights** > > A git repository is already a history of versions each carrying a provenance marker — every revision of the file, in order, with the author of the change that made it. Maybe I'm missing how people use AI these days but when I have an agent working locally, all git commits have my authorship attached. > — [spuz on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49234890) > I'm curious why people care about such tracking? I hardly use an editor anymore, and I'm not alone. All that matters is who is signing off on the commit. > Text a human wrote or edited should be considered close to sacred: an agent should be hesitant and have a very good reason to touch it. Not sure I agree (particularly with code, not prose). If code is risky to change for reasons that aren't obvious, it should be commented as such. It doesn't matter how the bytes were generated. > Another use case: the README.md, originally generated, where you rewrite the opening paragraphs. The agent should feel free to redo or append parts further downwards but should really think twice changing anything in the opener. This, I understand. > — [hamandcheese on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49237097) > Cool, we do the same thing, but we also denote when a line is "AI generated but was modified by a human" (aka human made anything upwards of a 1 character change). > — [alansaber on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49234383) > > I hardly use an editor anymore, and I'm not alone. All that matters is who is signing off on the commit. In such a context I won't distinguish between me and an agent. But same, almost no editor these days. For coding, this is more useful for heavily vibecoded projects. Thb, for my own projects most likely I will end up using it only for specs and documentation, maybe in rare cases for some tests. But, I use it for agentic memory, where I can edit the memories as well, and the agent should tend to preserve my edits when updating them. In general, my main use case is tracking texts in knowledge management systems. > — [eighttrigrams on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49237454) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232300) · 44 points · 12 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [I'm Scared a Stranger Will Call My Novel AI, So I Built GitHub for Words \(Meet VellumProof, Formerly WritHub, Lol\)](https://daily.dev/posts/i-m-scared-a-stranger-will-call-my-novel-ai-so-i-built-github-for-words-meet-vellumproof-formerly-ehbciklw5) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Git Isn’t Just for Developers. It Might Be the Best Writing Tool Ever](https://daily.dev/posts/git-isn-t-just-for-developers-it-might-be-the-best-writing-tool-ever-3blev9hdi) · It's Foss · 76 upvotes · 7 comments - [Building GitHuman: An AI-Coded Tool for Reviewing AI Code](https://daily.dev/posts/building-githuman-an-ai-coded-tool-for-reviewing-ai-code-m78k9f0lw) · Adventures in Nodeland · 6 upvotes · 1 comments - [Always Be Blaming](https://daily.dev/posts/always-be-blaming-yi37onju1) · matklad · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#git](https://daily.dev/tags/git), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#version-control](https://daily.dev/tags/version-control), [#clojure](https://daily.dev/tags/clojure) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/human-vs-ai-diff-based-line-level-provenance-for-text-under-agentic-editing-rn4p3ptsj) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Human vs. AI – Diff-based line-level provenance for text under agentic editing","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/human-vs-ai-diff-based-line-level-provenance-for-text-under-agentic-editing-rn4p3ptsj","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/human-vs-ai-diff-based-line-level-provenance-for-text-under-agentic-editing-rn4p3ptsj"},"datePublished":"2026-08-09T19:53:02.952Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T07:16:40.108Z","description":"Us vs. Them is an open source CLI and library tool that tracks line-level authorship provenance in text files under agentic editing. 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