Hm. We must use git completely differently then. I can't really imagine what what I'd do without them.

> there's nothing they convey that commit messages don't express better.

Presumably you'd still want to maintain a list of HEADs, so you just want to alway refer to them by hash instead of a branch name? That's fine I guess -- not sure what it buys you.

> What happens if you amend a commit after checking it out?

Then it becomes a new commit? Not sure what you're getting at.