In a nutshell, when you clone a Git repository, the git clone command will start a conversation with the Git server you're connecting to in order to figure out what all is available on the server and what it would like to get. ❯ time git clone --bundle-uri=https://[cdn]/bundle/gitlab-base.bundle https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss.git g2 Cloning into 'g2'... remote: Enumerating objects: 1092703, done. However, when the bundle is downloaded and unpacked, it will only actually use the objects that were pointed to by a local branch (which, right after a clone is probably only master/main) to negotiate with the server for which objects it still needs.