Make it a habit to run before doing anything on a repository. I just learned this today and wanted to write it down to make it stick on my mind - or get familiar with it. git status 1. To create a new branch Execute . A good practice is to name the branch with the focus of your edit. git branch <name_of_branch> Ex: git branch markdown 2. Checkout a branch Run to work on your branch. Make it a habit to do small changes so it's easy to go back if you mess up. git checkout <name_of_branch> Once done with your changes, you want to add all changes, commit to your changes and push it to your dev repository. a) Now you run to see the changes on your repository. git status b) Then run or you can do to add all the changes instead. git add <filename> git add -A 3. Create a commit Commit your changes by running git commit -m "Your message" 4. Push to remote Finally, you push your commit by running . Git will compain because GitHub doesn't know about your new branch. So run git push git push --set-upstream origin <branch_name> If you want to delete a branch. We would go to the main branch then delete our branch from there. a) To go to the main branch, run git checkout <main_branch> b) Once in the main branch, run git branch -d <name_of_branch> This is what I learned in an hour, with an example of the main repository from a mentor.