Commits, the Save-Points

Lesson 3 · taught by Pip

We have our notebook; now we take our first snapshot. Here is the plain idea: a commit is a snapshot of your entire project, frozen at one moment and saved forever, with a short note from you explaining what it captures.

If you remember only one word from this whole course, make it commit. Everything else is built on top of it. A commit is the save-point your work returns to, the milestone in your history, the thing you can always come back to.

The signed-and-dated draft analogy

Picture our book again. Every so often, when a chapter feels right, the author prints it, writes a note on the cover — "Chapter 3, after the editor's cuts" — signs it, dates it, and files it in a drawer.

That filed draft is a commit. It's complete (the whole chapter, not a stray sentence), it's labeled (the note explains what it is), and it's permanent (you don't scribble on a filed draft — you file a new one when you change things).

Crucially, filing a draft doesn't stop you writing. Your live pages stay in front of you. The drawer just gains one more trustworthy snapshot to return to if today's work goes sideways.

What a commit contains

Each commit holds three things worth knowing.

First, the snapshot itself — the state of all your tracked files at that instant. Not just what changed; Git can reconstruct the whole project exactly as it was.

Second, a message — your short note describing the change, like "Fix the spelling on the title page." This is the diary entry future-you will be grateful for.

Third, a link to the commit before it. Each save-point points back to the one prior, so all your commits form a chain — an ordered story from the very first snapshot to the latest. That chain is your history.

Good commit messages

A commit message is a kindness to your future self. "stuff" or "changes" tells you nothing in a month. "Add the introduction paragraph" tells you exactly what that save-point holds.

A simple habit: finish the sentence "This commit will…" — "…add the introduction paragraph." Short, honest, specific. You'll thank yourself every time you scroll back through your history looking for a particular moment.

Commit often, in small bites

Many beginners save one giant commit a week. Resist that. A commit should capture one coherent change — fix a typo, add a section, adjust a layout. Small, frequent save-points give you precise places to return to.

Think of it like the author filing a draft after each finished thought, not once the whole book is done. If something breaks, you want to step back one tidy step — not unwind a week of tangled work all at once.

Your turn

First, a quick recall: what are the three things every commit holds? (Answer: the snapshot of all your files, your message, and the link back to the commit before it.)

Now, on paper, sketch three commit messages for a project you know — a résumé, say. Maybe: "Add work history section," then "Fix the dates in education," then "Shorten the summary to three lines."

Notice how reading just those three lines tells the whole story of your edits. That readable story is what commits give you.

Next we'll look at how you choose what goes into a commit — a small in-between step called staging. 🐙