~/meetings / 2026-02-05
Meeting #7

> 2026-02-05

Hands-on Git and GitHub deep dive with Lawrence. Whit walked through the full version control workflow — commits, staging, .gitignore, remotes, cloning, forking, and branches — while Lawrence set up VS Code, created a GitHub account, and forked the Seafood SKU Lookup repo. Lawrence also shared progress on manually cleaning and verifying the fish data file.

2 attendees(Whit, Lawrence)
##topics covered
  1. 01.Git explained — version management, commits as snapshots, tracking diffs across a whole project
  2. 02.Terminal basics — pwd, ls, cd, cd .. (parent directory navigation)
  3. 03..gitignore — why node_modules shouldn't be committed, creating the file, wildcard patterns
  4. 04.Staging and committing — git add (by file vs. dot for all), git commit -m, what staging is for
  5. 05.Commit message best practices — descriptive, logical units of work rather than time-based saves
  6. 06.Cursor's source control panel — visual staging view, file status color indicators
  7. 07.Git log / commit history — reviewing past commits and what changed
  8. 08.Git vs. GitHub — Git is the local tool, GitHub is cloud storage; alternatives exist (GitLab, etc.)
  9. 09.Cloning a repository — git clone, directory placement, auto-sets origin remote
  10. 10.git remote — local repo connected to GitHub via origin, how to verify the connection
  11. 11.Forking — why fork instead of cloning directly; distributed version control model
  12. 12.Branches — main as the production branch, feature branches, merging back into main
  13. 13.GitHub + Vercel integration — pushing to main auto-deploys
  14. 14.Installing VS Code on Mac — download, drag to Applications, built-in terminal (Ctrl+~)
  15. 15.Lawrence's fish data cleanup — manually verified all SKUs, removed duplicates and bad characters, adding missing common names
  16. 16.Live edit walkthrough — adding 'octopus' as a common name alias in data.json
  17. 17.JSON structure recap — key-value pairs, arrays vs. lists (JavaScript vs. Python terminology)
  18. 18.GitHub credentials and git push — setting up auth for first-time pushes
##decisions & next steps
  • →Lawrence created a GitHub account and forked the seafood-sku-lookup repo
  • →Lawrence to continue manually curating the fish name alias database on his own time
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