Cheap LFS versus Git LFS comparison atlas

The standalone Cheap LFS versus Git LFS comparison atlas is the decision surface for teams choosing how large payloads should leave ordinary Git objects. It is separate from the complete Cheap LFS product guide: the guide teaches one product from first pin through restore; the atlas spends its entire surface comparing the two operating models.

The comparison is marketing-forward, but its outcome is not preselected. Cheap LFS gets the clearer signal where Desktop Material has a guided Windows workflow, explicit provider verification, Release/OCI choice, multipart logical files, optional encryption, recovery, and detailed progress. Git LFS gets the clearer signal where its published standard, cross-platform clients, host and tool ecosystem, file locking, caching, pruning, history migration, CI, and automation are the stronger fit. Cost, retention, several transfer choices, and collaboration policy remain explicitly contextual.

Scope and evidence boundary

The atlas contains exactly 72 criteria in 12 categories, six criteria per category:

Each criterion owns a stable difference-NN identifier, one category, one fit signal (cheap, git, tie, or depends), English and Hong Kong Cantonese copy for both products, a review date, and one or more source identifiers. A source identifier resolves into the visible bibliography rather than merely asserting that a relevant-looking link exists somewhere on the page.

“Every current documented difference” is intentionally dated July 28, 2026. It means every product-level distinction that this repository could state and source at that checkpoint. It is not a promise that host prices, limits, policy, clients, or this implementation can never change.

Publication order and git push

The dedicated Git push tab makes the most easily confused boundary explicit:

1. preflight the real push remote and canonical GitHub identity;
2. when the first Release-backed publication requires it, create and prove the app's create-only branch anchor;
3. upload, reread, and verify the provider bytes;
4. review and commit the Cheap LFS pointer;
5. run ordinary git push to publish that pointer commit; and
6. fetch, prove that HEAD equals @{upstream}, and exercise a fresh restore.

Plain git push does not pin a raw file into Cheap LFS. On an established branch the app finishes the provider transaction before the pointer commit exists. A first Release-backed branch is the documented exception: the app may need a create-only, hook-skipping anchor before the Release can exist. OCI publication does not need a Release anchor.

The safe inspection sequence is:

git remote get-url --push origin
git show HEAD:path/to/large-file.bin
git push
git fetch origin
git rev-parse HEAD
git rev-parse '@{upstream}'

The last two values must match. git show reads the committed pointer even when Desktop Material has deliberately materialized raw working bytes over it. CLI git status may therefore show that working file as modified; users must not accidentally git add the raw payload over the pointer.

git push --set-upstream origin HEAD is ordinary manual branch publication. It can update an existing fast-forwardable branch and runs the normal hooks. It is not equivalent to the app's create-only Release anchor.

Git LFS follows its standard filter and pre-push path: git lfs track writes a shared .gitattributes rule, the clean filter records a Git LFS pointer, and the installed pre-push hook uploads missing objects before Git completes its ref update.

Interaction and persisted configuration

The page uses six browser-style tabs: Verdict, All differences, Workflows, Git push, Fit finder, and Sources. Tabs expose one roving keyboard tab stop, Left/Right/Home/End navigation, drag reordering, explicit move controls, pinning, a narrow-screen overflow selector, hash restoration, and persisted order and pin state. A per-tab appearance editor persists font family, size, selected color, and radius and can reset to the Material defaults.

Comparison filters compose across:

• plain text, which remains the default;
• an explicit bounded regular-expression mode;
• one of 12 categories; and
• one fit signal.

The filter count is live and atomic, and narrow screens receive a card layout instead of document-level horizontal overflow. Category and fit choices persist under route-specific keys; queries, patterns, and sample text do not.

The page shares the site-wide persisted language, theme, and independent English/Cantonese funny-level keys. The baseline modes are English, playful Hong Kong Cantonese, and bilingual. Funny levels alter surrounding voice, not commands, dates, counts, limits, source names, or factual claims.

Regex safety

The atlas loads the documentation site's shared docs-regex-job.js runner and docs-hub-regex-worker.js evaluator. Reader-authored patterns never compile on the page thread. Every search or builder operation runs in a fresh same-origin worker that the page terminates at a hard 750 ms deadline.

The builder labels the dialect as ECMAScript and provides literals, character classes, anchors, groups, alternation, and quantifiers alongside a raw editor, flags, sample text, syntax feedback, match offsets, capture previews, copy, and apply. The route bounds its pattern to 240 characters and sample to 1,200 characters, inside the shared worker's 512/20,000 hard ceilings. The worker advances zero-width Unicode matches safely. An unavailable or timed-out worker fails closed instead of falling back to an uninterruptible UI-thread regex.

Failure modes

Security and privacy

• The page loads no remote script, stylesheet, font, or image. Its two marketing diagrams are repository-owned SVGs with titles and descriptions.
• Search patterns and sample text stay local and are not persisted.
• Source links separate core Git LFS facts from GitHub-specific billing, limits, forks, archives, Releases, and Pages policy.
• Neither SHA-256 pointer is described as encryption. Cheap LFS's optional encryption is scoped to the documented provider routes; Git LFS core not defining payload encryption does not mean an extension can never transform a stream.
• Encrypted Cheap pointers still expose plaintext size and SHA-256 plus provider structure. The page calls that out rather than marketing encryption as anonymity.
• The page does not claim unlimited file size, perpetual free bandwidth, universal speed, or drop-in pointer interoperability.
• Open issue #96 remains an explicit boundary on observed 50+ GiB inventory hardening. Issues #80, #85, and #87 remain visible where built recovery/decrypting/unattended evidence is not yet complete.

Verification

The atlas is now a page of the Material Design 3 site at /#atlas rather than a file of its own, and /cheap-lfs-vs-git-lfs.html redirects there so every link ever made to it still arrives. Its contract moved with it: script/site-dc-pages-test.mjs covers the whole site, including this page, the redirect, and the assets it renders.

The Lowlevel MCP acceptance driver is .codex/verification/verify_cheap_lfs_vs_git_lfs_page.js. It serves an assembled Pages tree so the shared documentation worker paths resolve exactly as they do in production, then drives installed Chrome on an off-screen Win32 desktop at 1440×960 and 390×844. The dated evidence and cleanup record live in docs/verification/cheap-lfs-vs-git-lfs-pages-2026-07-28/.

That receipt records a completed 35-check installed-Chrome run, the accepted captures and their SHA-256 hashes, the bounded pre-fix application-build boundary, and owned-resource cleanup. It remains a local acceptance record until the pushed SHA, Pages run, and live route are proved separately.