I'm new to GitHub and I'm trying to understand how it works, especially in relation to Claude, which I use frequently for academic writing and HTML coding. I've created a GitHub account, but I'm not clear on how to utilize it with Claude or what benefits I can get from this integration. Can someone explain how GitHub functions and how it can enhance my experience with Claude?
3 Answers
GitHub is all about version control. Think of it as a way to keep track of what changes you've made to your code over time. You’ve got branches (different versions of your project), commits (saving your changes), and pull requests (asking to merge those changes back into the main project). For Claude, you can set it up to use GitHub in an agentic way, allowing it to track changes just like Git does. You might want to install the GitHub app and explore some open source projects to see how others contribute! It's pretty cool.
When using Claude, I typically work with Xcode and GitHub Desktop. Claude Code can read everything from my local repository; I edit things there and then push updates to GitHub. Essentially, GitHub acts as my source of truth, keeping everything organized and updated in one place.
To really get GitHub working with Claude, you should install the GitHub CLI. This lets you interact with GitHub directly from Claude, guiding you through login, creating repositories, and committing your code. It's super user-friendly, so you don’t have to become a GitHub expert to get started with it!
That sounds easy! Are there any specific commands I should know for use with Claude?