Timeline and recovery
Review the edit history for the open document, including agent, human, upstream sync, and file system changes, with inline diffs and version restore.
The timeline shows you the history of edits made to the document you have open. From there you can view or revert to older versions of the document.
What the timeline shows
Open the timeline from the document side panel by clicking the icon. Each entry shows who made the change, when it happened, and a short summary of the change.
Timeline entries include:
- Agent and human edits with contributor attribution and change summaries
- Upstream sync entries from Git
- File system changes made outside of OpenKnowledge
Project-wide checkpoints saved by agents via the checkpoint MCP tool do not appear on the timeline; agents find and restore them with the history and restore_version tools.
The timeline is per branch: it shows the branch's own edits, plus history from before the branch diverged from main. History is stored in a shadow git repo inside your project, so entries and attribution survive app restarts and agent sessions — see Attribution and collaboration.
Review changes
Click a timeline entry to expand it. OpenKnowledge shows an inline diff so you can compare that version with the current document. If that version has the same body as the current document (properties are not part of the diff), you will see No changes.
You can switch between unified and split diff layouts from the toggle at the top of the timeline panel (shown once the timeline has entries).
Restore a previous version
Use the restore button on a timeline entry to restore the document to the selected version. Restoring is append-only: OpenKnowledge creates a new change with the old content instead of deleting history.