Pushing your progress to Github

🎥 Video lesson — video not yet migrated (source Skool video id: 6bb50a66e6b548deae56f6d78459006b).

Backing Up Your Project with GitHub — Code Storage 101

Everything we've built so far is stored locally on your computer. If your laptop dies, gets lost, or crashes — it's all gone. This video walks through setting up GitHub to back up and sync your project, so your work is always safe in the cloud.

Think of GitHub as Google Drive for code. Just like you'd save a Word doc to Google Drive so you can access it from any computer, GitHub does the same thing for your project files and folders.

What we cover:

  1. Creating a free GitHub account and setting up a new repository
  2. Authenticating GitHub in the CLI through Claude Code
  3. Making your first commit and pushing your project to the remote repository
  4. Understanding the .gitignore file and why your .env (API keys) never gets pushed

Step-by-step setup:

  1. Go to github.com → create an account (free) → create a new repository
  2. Name it the same as your local project folder (e.g. agentic-workflows) to avoid confusion
  3. Set the repository to Private so others can't see your code
  4. In Cursor's terminal, run Claude Code and ask it to link your GitHub account, initialise the repo, and push your local files to the remote
  5. Claude will install GitHub CLI via Homebrew, authenticate through the browser, and handle the commit for you

Key terms explained:

  • Local — what's on your computer right now
  • Remote — what's stored on GitHub (in the cloud)
  • Commit — saving a snapshot of your current progress (like a save point in a video game)
  • Push — uploading your local changes to the remote repository
  • Pull — downloading the latest changes from the remote to your local environment
  • Merge conflicts — when what's on GitHub differs from what's on your computer (happens when multiple people work on the same project). AI usually handles this for you now
  • Branches — separate environments for testing features before they go live (covered more in full-stack development modules)

Important security reminder: Your .gitignore file tells GitHub which files to never sync. This is where your .env file (containing API keys) gets excluded. Claude Code automatically checks for this before pushing, but always verify your .env is listed in .gitignore before committing.

When to commit: Think of commits like save points in a video game. Whenever you've made progress you don't want to lose — a new workflow is working, an agent is built, you've populated sidecar files — ask Claude Code: "Can you please commit what's in the local environment to the remote repository?"

Useful prompts for Claude Code:

  • "Can you please check that my GitHub account is linked and commit to the remote repository?"
  • "Can you please pull the latest updates from the remote into my local environment?"
  • "Can you please commit the current changes with the message '[describe what you changed]'?"

Tip: Name your GitHub repository the exact same thing as your local folder. This prevents the AI from getting confused about which is which when mapping things out.

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