Git & GitHub glossary (for normal people)

Every term you'll meet working on a markdown-based site or wiki, in the order you'll meet them. No prior knowledge assumed — this is the companion to the tutorials and the onboarding path.

Repository (repo) — the project's folder, hosted on GitHub: all its files plus the complete history of every change ever made to them. Your website or wiki is one repo.

git — the version-control system underneath everything: the program that tracks changes to files over time. You mostly meet it through friendlier tools (GitHub's website, GitHub Desktop) rather than directly.

GitHub — a website that hosts git repositories and adds the social layer: accounts, access, reviewing, discussion. git is the engine; GitHub is the garage.

Clone — copy a repository from GitHub onto your computer, history included. You edit the local copy; the one on GitHub is the shared original.

Commit — save a snapshot of your changes, with a short message saying what you did ("fix typo on about page"). Think "save, with a note to your future self". Commits are why nothing is ever really lost.

Push — send your local commits up to GitHub so everyone (including the website build) gets them. Until you push, your changes exist only on your machine.

Pull — the reverse: fetch other people's commits from GitHub down to your copy. Do it before you start editing, and life has fewer merge conflicts.

Branch — a temporary parallel version of the repo where you make changes without touching the main one. The main branch (usually called main) is what the live site is built from.

Fork — your own copy of someone else's repo, on your GitHub account. Like a branch, but across ownership boundaries — how you contribute to projects you don't have edit rights on.

Pull request (PR) — "here are my changes; please review and pull them into the main branch". The unit of collaboration: shows exactly what would change, hosts the discussion, and merges with a click when approved.

Merge — combine one branch's changes into another, usually via a PR. When two people changed the same lines, git asks a human to pick — that's a merge conflict, it's routine, and the rescue guide walks you through it.

Stage — mark which of your edited files go into the next commit. GitHub Desktop shows this as checkboxes; ticking them is staging.

Remote / origin — the copy of the repo that lives on GitHub (as opposed to the local one on your machine). "Origin" is just git's default nickname for it.

Terms in the wild: watch them all appear, in order, in tutorial 2 and tutorial 3.