iirc Linus actually conceded this very early on and said that he thought it would be better if it were used as infrastructure to build tools on rather than the tool itself.

no idea where I saw that though and it was many many years ago.

I think at that point he only had the plumbing commands. Commands like "git commit" are the tools he meant.

In any case, the refined version of that admission - the deliberate porcelain/plumbing distinction - is still best explained in the git docs and I wish more tools would copy it. apt(-get) has cautiously started that process, while GnuPG sadly remains a box shock full of surprises in both API and CLI.