How to Undo a Git Commit: The Right Command Depends on Two Questions

Undoing a Git commit has multiple correct approaches, but choosing the right one requires answering two questions first: where does the change currently live, and has anyone else pulled it? For local, uncommitted changes, commands like 'git restore' or 'git restore --staged' are appropriate depending on whether the edit is in the working tree or the index. Committed but unpushed changes can be safely undone with 'git reset --soft HEAD~1', which removes the commit while preserving the staged content. Once a commit has been pushed and shared with others, rewriting history is risky, and 'git revert' is the safer choice as it adds an inverse commit rather than deleting history. Using 'git reset --hard' is the most destructive option, permanently discarding uncommitted changes with no recovery path through the reflog.