Version control (Git)

Version control is a system that records the history of your project so every change is saved as a labeled snapshot you can review, compare, or return to. Git is the tool most projects use to do this.

Version control is a system that records the history of your project so every change is saved as a labeled snapshot you can review, compare, or return to. Git, the most widely used version control tool, keeps that history alongside your files. Say you ask an AI assistant to add a password reset feature to a to-do app and the login page breaks. With version control in place, you can see exactly which lines changed, compare the working snapshot against the broken one, and restore the last good version in seconds. Without it, your only record is whatever happens to be sitting in the files right now.

Builder example

When an AI coding assistant edits dozens of files in one pass, version control is how you stay in control of what it did. You ask the assistant to save a snapshot before a change, then review the recorded difference afterward, so a confident-but-wrong edit to a support bot becomes a one-step undo instead of a manual cleanup. Hosting your snapshots also gives most deployment platforms a place to pull from, so saving a new version becomes the trigger that ships your update.

Common confusion: Version control is the general practice of saving project history; Git is the specific tool that almost everyone uses to do it, which is why people say the two words together. Saving a file in your editor overwrites the previous version, while a version control snapshot keeps both so you can move between them.