Repository Step 4: Work on a Branch

On your own machine, add a genuinely new feature to your project, but do all of it on a branch. Create the branch, make at least two commits on it, then switch back to main and confirm with ls and git log that main knows nothing about the work yet. Then merge it. Afterwards, deliberately create a conflict: make a branch, change one line, switch to main, change the same line differently, and merge. Read the conflict markers, resolve them by hand, then add and commit. Doing that once on purpose, calmly, is worth far more than meeting it for the first time under pressure.