Remotes & Collaboration

A remote is a version of your repository hosted elsewhere (like GitHub). Remotes let you back up your work and collaborate with others.

Connecting to a remote

# Link your local repo to a remote named "origin"
git remote add origin https://github.com/user/repo.git

# Verify
git remote -v

# Push your branch and set it to track the remote
git push -u origin main

After -u (upstream) is set once, you can just use git push and git pull.

Syncing changes

# Download remote changes WITHOUT merging (safe to review)
git fetch

# Download AND merge into your current branch
git pull

The collaboration workflow

A typical team flow with pull requests:

# 1. Start from up-to-date main
git switch main
git pull

# 2. Create a feature branch
git switch -c feature/new-page

# 3. Work, commit, and push
git add .
git commit -m "Add new page"
git push -u origin feature/new-page

# 4. Open a Pull Request on GitHub for review
# 5. After approval, merge it into main

Pull Requests

A Pull Request (PR) proposes merging your branch into another. It's where code review, discussion, and automated checks (CI) happen before code reaches the main branch.