What is cognitive version control?

Cognitive version control is a concept in personal epistemology: Track versions of your agents so you can compare, rollback, and learn from changes.

Example: You have a morning routine agent — the sequence of decisions that determines how your first ninety minutes unfold. Six months ago it was v1.0: wake, scroll phone, coffee, sit at desk, react to email. After reading about deep work you updated to v2.0: wake, no phone for sixty minutes, coffee, journal, tackle one hard task. After a month of v2.0, you noticed the journaling step felt forced and added friction, so you patched to v2.1: wake, no phone, coffee, five-minute written intention, tackle one hard task. Without version labels, all you know is 'I changed my morning routine at some point.' With them, you can see the trajectory, compare the effectiveness of each version, and roll back to v2.0 if v2.1 underperforms.

This concept is part of Phase 30 (Agent Lifecycle) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for agent lifecycle.