Remotes and GitHub: your project in the cloud

Everything so far happens on your own computer. GitHub is a website that stores a copy of your repo in the cloud. That copy is called a remote.

Why bother? Three reasons: it's a backup if your laptop dies, it's how you share code with others (or with AI tools and deployment services), and it's where collaboration happens.

You link your local repo to a remote once, then you push (send your commits up to GitHub) and pull (bring down commits from GitHub).

# Connect your local repo to a GitHub repo (one time)
git remote add origin https://github.com/yourname/yourproject.git

# Send your commits up to GitHub
git push origin main

# Bring down any commits that are on GitHub but not on your computer
git pull origin main

Think of push as "save to the cloud" and pull as "get the latest from the cloud."