How can I change history by directly editing patches and metadata?

Question

Git has a bunch of procedures for altering history.
(rebase, filter-branch, commit --ammend, guilt, stacked git, etc)

However, it may sometimes be preferable if there was a procedure to turn the last few commits into a file containing a series of patches with the commit metadata, which could be freely edited, and then turned back into a rebased history (assuming the patches still applied).

Does anyone have a way to do this?

Answer 1

You could try git format-patch and git am, but that would generate one file per commit though.
You can also use git diff, but that would combine several commits into one patch.

Answer 2

During your git rebase -i, set the commits you want to change to be edited. Then you can modify them and re-commit with another message all you want.