How Git Actually Thinks (And Why Most Developers Have It Wrong)

Part 1 of the Git Mastery Series Here's a conversation that happens on every development team, roughly once a month: Someone runs git reset --hard when they meant something else. Or they rebase and the history looks completely wrong. Or they merge a branch and can't figure out why certain changes didn't come through. And then they type something into a chat: "I think I broke Git." You can't break Git. But you can absolutely confuse yourself when you're working with a mental model that doesn't match what Git is actually doing. Most Git tutorials teach you commands. Very few teach you how Git thinks. That's the gap this article closes — because once the model clicks, the commands stop being incantations you copy from Stack Overflow and start being decisions you make intentionally. Git Doesn't Store Diffs. It Stores Snapshots. This is the most important thing to understand about Git, and it's the thing most tutorials either skip or bury in chapter 10. When you run git commit , Git does no