Skip to content

Git for Mere Mortals

Git is the save-point system underneath modern software work: every change a snapshot, every snapshot labeled, whole histories you can rewind. This guide collects four plain-language primers — the git you'll use every day, the GitHub CLI, GitHub Actions, and the GitOps vocabulary — written for people learning it for work, not for people who already know it.

No jargon without an explanation. No "it's simple, just..." Every concept starts with the idea, then the commands.

What this guide covers

  • Git primer — the save-point mental model, setup, the 7 commands you'll use every day, branches, and a cookbook of real situations: undoing mistakes, merge conflicts, stashing, cleaning up branches deleted on GitHub
  • GitHub CLI primer (gh) — the GitHub website in your terminal: repos, issues, pull requests, Actions runs, and the gh api escape hatch
  • GitHub Actions primer — workflows, events, jobs, steps, secrets, and self-hosted runners on Linux and Windows, from trigger to green check
  • GitOps vocabulary — what repo, PR, pipeline, CI/CD, drift, and rollback mean when "the repo is the truth about what should be running"

What it doesn't cover

Deep GitHub Actions (expressions, environments, reusable workflows) and the full GitOps practice — both have their own guides, linked under "Go deeper" below. This guide is the working vocabulary and daily reference, not the whole subject.

How to use this guide

Start with the git primer, then pick up the others as needed. Every git command in the primer was run against real git before shipping; the GitHub CLI commands were checked against the real gh, with login-required output clearly marked. The cookbook grows from real messes — hit a confusing git situation at work? That's the next entry.

Chapters

  1. Git Primer
  2. GitHub CLI Primer (gh)
  3. GitHub Actions Primer
  4. GitOps Vocabulary
  5. Glossary

Go deeper

Written to the nine-point writing standard shared by every guide in this series.