A soft reset moves the current branch reference while leaving the index and working tree intact. That can prepare an unpublished commit for rewriting without discarding its changes. The resulting status differs from a mixed reset, which also changes the index. Confirm the desired base revision and inspect the staged content afterward. These exercises keep the intended new file staged while the branch returns to its previous snapshot. After resetting one commit softly, the base history is shorter but the new route should remain in the cached diff. If it appears only in a plain diff, you reset the index as well.