Git and GitHub, Explained for People Who Aren't Developers

Your project is a folder of files. Git keeps a complete history of that folder — not just the current version, but every version you have ever committed, with who made the change, when, and why. That single property is what gives you undo, safe experimentation, blame, and collaboration. GitHub is a website that hosts those histories and adds review tools on top. You can use Git without GitHub; you almost certainly want both.

• Repository (repo) — one project folder plus its entire history.
• Commit — a saved snapshot with a message explaining what changed and why.
• Branch — a safe copy of the project to experiment on, so your working version stays clean.
• Merge — taking the finished work from a branch back into the main one.
• Remote — the copy of your history living on GitHub.

Nearly all Git work is the same four steps: check what changed, stage the files you want, commit them with a message, and push them to GitHub.

git status              # what has changed?
git add .                 # stage everything
git commit -m "why I changed it"
git push                  # send it to GitHub

A branch is a parallel timeline. Create one before touching anything, do the work, and merge it back when it works. If it goes wrong you delete the branch and nothing happened. This is what removes the fear of experimenting, and it is genuinely the feature worth learning first.

git switch -c my-change   # create and move to a branch
git switch main            # go back to main
git switch -d my-change    # delete it when you're done

• Uncommitted changes you want to discard — `git restore .` (throws the edits away; there is no undo).
• A commit you want to change — `git commit --amend` to fix the message or add a forgotten file.
• A commit already pushed — don't rewrite shared history. Add a new commit that reverses it.
• A file you deleted by accident — `git restore <file>` brings it straight back.
• Anything you are not sure about — stop. `git status` is always safe and always tells you where you are.