GitHub

GitHub is where your code projects live online. Set it up before your first project. It takes about ten minutes, and after that your AI agent does most of the GitHub work for you. You just need to know what the words mean.

What GitHub is

A website that stores your code projects in the cloud. Like Google Drive, but built for projects with code in them.

You get three things from it:

Backup. Your project is safe even if your laptop dies.
Sharing. Anyone with the link can see it, copy it, or build on it.
Deployment. Hosting services put your project on the internet straight from GitHub. A later assignment covers that.

It's free, including private projects only you can see. Most producers stay on the free tier forever.

The way I think of it: a GitHub repo (short for repository) is a project folder where every version you ever saved is still inside. You can jump back to any moment, like version history on a song.

Sign up

Go to github.com and make a free account. Use your real name or your artist name. The username is public.

Turn on two-factor authentication in your account settings. Use an authenticator app on your phone. Two minutes. Don't skip it.

Install GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop is a free visual app for working with GitHub, and it's the right main tool for producers. You see your changes before you save them, click a button to upload, and scroll back through your whole history.

Download from desktop.github.com.
Open it and sign in with your GitHub account.
When it asks for your name and email, use the same ones as your account.

The terminal Git commands still exist underneath, and your agent uses them sometimes. You don't have to.

The five Git words that matter

These come up whether you click buttons in GitHub Desktop or let the agent run commands. You don't memorize the commands. You do want to know the words, because the AI uses them and the buttons are labeled with them.

Word	What it does	Producer analogy
`clone`	Download a copy of a project from GitHub	Downloading a project pack to remix
`commit`	Save a snapshot of your changes with a note	Bouncing a version: "v3 with new bass"
`push`	Upload your saved snapshots to GitHub	Uploading the bounce to your shared drive
`pull`	Download the latest version from GitHub	Syncing the newest version from the cloud
`branch`	Try something without touching the main version	Save As before you experiment

That's the whole vocabulary for your first six months.

How you'll use it here

Two paths, both fine. Mostly the first.

Let your agent handle it. Inside your project folder, tell the agent:

"Create a new GitHub repo for this project called tap-tempo and push my code to it."

It runs the right commands. The first time, it may pop open a browser to sign in once. After that it just works.

Or use GitHub Desktop. Add your project folder, type a short message describing what changed, click Commit, click Push. Same result, with buttons.

One warning that gets its own assignment soon: never let an API key end up in a GitHub repo. For now, just file that away.

Submit

Enter your GitHub username. We'll verify the account exists, and from here on the course checks your actual repos to confirm your work. Your username is the thread that connects everything you build in this course to you.