Checkpoints

The commit habit that makes bold experiments free.

Here's the trade that makes fearless vibe coding possible: a tool called Git quietly photographs your entire project every time you say so. Each photo is a checkpoint (Git calls them commits). Break something an hour from now? One sentence returns every file to any checkpoint, exactly as it was.

This flips the psychology of experimenting. “Try a completely different homepage” stops being scary when the current one is a checkpoint away from restored. The people who move fastest with agents aren't braver; they just checkpoint more.

The habit

After every working milestone (feature done, bug fixed, thing looks right), one sentence to your agent:

Checkpoint this: commit everything with a clear message.

And when disaster strikes:

Something broke. Show me my last few checkpoints and roll back to the most recent one that worked.

That's the entire Git education this guide requires. No memorized commands, no diagrams of branches. The agent runs Git; you just decide when a moment is worth keeping. (The agents even nudge you: Codex's own docs tell you to checkpoint before and after big tasks. Believe them.)

AI Clubhouse · Vibe Coding Guide