Inotify is the official kernel supported tool that uses the inotify API, again that is the official kernel API for monitoring files and folders.

Its not that immediate to use, specially because there are caveats but works reliably well and indeed get the job done. Why do you say fragile? There isn't a more comprehensive approach.

Only issue, doesn't work on NFS and Samba shares.

inotifywait in a loop? Why not something like this?

inotifywait -m -r -e create,delete,modify,move /home/.hermes/config

I second the inotifywait method. Thats currently how I look for new appimages and auto add them to my menus. You can tell it a directory like what you are looking for, and have it only trigger on new files, edited files and deleted files, then have it run an external script when it does.

If you want simple, just commit unconditionally every x minutes with cron. It won't do anything if there's nothing to commit

IDEs like JetBrains use inotify to monitor filesystem changes

INotify sounds best. Otherwise watch -n 10 git commit -am "auto" && git push. Git dont allow empty commits.

What are you doing Hermes?