Git Workflow Strategies for Solo Developers and Small Teams

Git is the most important tool in your development arsenal, yet many developers only scratch the surface. A solid Git workflow prevents lost work, makes collaboration smooth, and keeps your project history clean.

Branch Naming Conventions

Use descriptive prefixes: feature/user-auth, fix/login-redirect, hotfix/xss-vulnerability. This makes it immediately clear what each branch does. Keep branch names lowercase with hyphens — they're easier to type and read in terminal output.

Writing Meaningful Commit Messages

Follow the conventional commits format: feat: add user registration, fix: resolve N+1 query on blog index, refactor: extract email service class. The prefix categorizes changes, and the description explains what changed. Use the commit body to explain why if the reason isn't obvious.

Interactive Rebase for Clean History

Before merging a feature branch, use git rebase -i main to squash work-in-progress commits, reword messages, and reorder changes. A clean history is invaluable when you need to bisect bugs or understand past decisions months later.

Stashing Like a Pro

Use git stash push -m "description" to save work-in-progress with context. List stashes with git stash list and apply specific ones with git stash apply stash@{2}. This beats creating throwaway commits when you need to switch context quickly.

The Solo Developer Workflow

Even working alone, use feature branches. Keep main always deployable. Create a branch for each feature or fix, test it, then merge. This prevents half-finished features from blocking deployments and gives you a safety net to abandon experiments without affecting stable code.

Good Git habits compound over time. Start with conventions that feel slightly too formal — your future self will thank you when debugging a production issue at midnight.