Track agent changes through Version History

Every document in Shannon now keeps its full version history: open the Version history panel, see exactly what changed between a version and the one before it, flip through versions with the arrow keys, and put any one of them back with a single click.

Shannon is the AI workspace I’m building: you hand its agent a task and it edits your documents directly, with every change marked up for your review like tracked changes from a coworker. Tracked changes answer the first question you ask about an agent’s work: what did it change? Version history answers the second: if this goes wrong, can I get back to what I had? Two halves of the same commitment: Transparency builds trust.

Every agent edit is a version

You never save a version; Shannon records them for you. Every time a document’s content changes, a new version is added to its history, and that includes every edit the agent makes. Kept means kept: there is no pruning and no expiry window. The first version of a document stays as reachable as the latest, however many the file collects between them.

See exactly what changed, version to version

Open the Version history panel and the document’s versions are laid out in order. Pick one, and Shannon shows what changed between it and the version before it right in the document: additions and removals marked in place, so you’re never holding two copies side by side trying to spot the moved paragraph.

Flip through versions with the arrow keys

With the panel open, the arrow keys walk the history: up steps to a newer version, down to an older one, and the marked-up changes update as you move. Finding the paragraph the agent rewrote a few runs back is pressing down until it reappears.

Restore any version with one click

When you find the version you want, the Restore button makes it the document again. One click; no exporting, no copying text out of an old file.

And restoring never rewrites history: it adds a new version carrying the old content, and every version after the one you restored stays in the panel. You can restore, change your mind, and restore your way back. Nothing you do in the history can lose work — including the act of undoing something.

Under the hood

History is append-only. No operation edits or deletes an earlier version, restore included, which is why restoring appends a copy instead of rolling anything back. Each write is deduplicated by hashing the document’s content, so a save that changes nothing adds no version and the history stays all signal. The panel compares each version against its predecessor only, one diff at a time, rendered inline in the document, and the arrow keys move that single comparison up and down the list.

The practical change is the size of swing you’ll let the agent take. A full-document rewrite used to be a risk you managed with a duplicated backup copy; now a bad one costs a click. Try it at shannon.bot — no sign-in needed. Hand the agent a document, ask for an edit, and open the Version history panel: it’s already filling in.