Undo and Recovery

Everyone makes mistakes in Git, including people who have used it for a decade. The difference is that they know which mistakes are reversible, which is nearly all of them, and which are not, which is a short and memorable list.

This section is the one to read before you need it. It starts with the safety net, gives you a map from "what I did wrong" to "the command that fixes it", then works through each fix in detail. By the end, the sentence "I think I broke something" stops being frightening.

Before you start: Section 5 for the everyday commands and Section 6 for branches. The decision guide at the end is the page to bookmark.