Over the years my [alias] block has been through a couple of purges. I used to collect them like stamps, one for every clever thing I read on a blog, and most of them I never typed twice. The ones that survived all have the same quality: they save a real keystroke on something I do twenty times a day, and they don't hide anything I'd want to see.
Here's what's left, in full:
[alias]
s = status -sb
co = checkout
last = log -1 HEAD --stat
lg = log --oneline --graph --decorate -20
amend = commit --amend --no-edit
s is the workhorse. status -sb gives me the short format with the branch line on top, which after a while reads faster than the verbose version's wall of advice about how to unstage things I already know how to unstage. lg is the only "pretty log" I kept, capped at twenty entries so it never runs off the screen and makes me reach for the scrollback.
amend with --no-edit is the one I'd actually miss. Half my commits are "fix the thing I forgot in the last commit", and not having to dismiss the editor every time is a small, genuine pleasure.
The ones I deleted are more instructive. I had a git unstage, a git uncommit, a whole git wip that stashed and branched and did three things at once. They all went because the day something went sideways, I couldn't remember what the alias actually ran, and a clever alias you have to look up is worse than the plain command you already know. So that's my rule now. An alias earns its keep if it's shorter, used daily, and I could write out the long form from memory if it ever broke.