Howtos for The Rest of Us

← Tools

Git

Git is the version control system used to clone and update most AI tools. You don’t need to be a Git expert - just a few commands cover most of what you’ll do.

Cloning a Repository

The most common Git operation in an AI setup:

git clone https://github.com/owner/repo.git

This downloads the repo into a folder named after it. To update later:

git pull

Basic Workflow

# Check what's changed
git status

# Stage files for commit
git add .

# Commit with a message
git commit -m "Describe what you changed"

# Push to remote
git push

Branching

# Create and switch to a new branch
git checkout -b my-feature

# Switch back to main
git checkout main

# Merge a branch into main
git merge my-feature

.gitignore

A .gitignore file tells Git which files to ignore - venvs, caches, API keys, OS junk.

# Python virtual environments
venv/
.env/

# OS files
.DS_Store
Thumbs.db

# AI model files (too large for Git)
*.pt
*.pth
*.bin
*.safetensors

Useful for AI Work

# Shallow clone - faster, no full history
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/owner/repo.git

# Check tags (for stable versions)
git tag

# Checkout a specific tag
git checkout v1.2.3

When to Re-Clone

If a repo gets into a broken state after a failed update:

# Save any local changes first
# Then delete and re-clone
cd ..
rmdir repo /s
git clone https://github.com/owner/repo.git

It’s faster than untangling merge conflicts.