Do I Need to Learn Git? (If You're Using AI to Code)

You’re building with AI. ChatGPT writes your code. Cursor or Claude Code handles the heavy lifting. Git keeps coming up in tutorials and advice, but do you actually need it?

Here’s an honest answer.

What Git Actually Does

Git is fundamentally about saving snapshots of your code. When you “commit,” you’re creating a restore point. If something breaks, you can go back. If you want to try an experiment, you can branch off and return later.

It also enables collaboration. Multiple people can work on the same codebase without overwriting each other’s changes. And it’s how you deploy to most platforms. Vercel, Netlify, Railway, they all connect to Git repositories.

Why Git Feels Awkward with AI Coding

Git was designed for a different era of programming. It assumes you’re making intentional, discrete changes. You write some code, you commit with a message describing what you did, you move on.

AI coding is different. Changes come fast. You might accept ten AI suggestions in five minutes. You often don’t fully understand what the AI changed until you test it. Stopping to commit feels like interrupting the flow.

This mismatch is real. Git’s model doesn’t fit naturally with rapid AI iteration, and forcing it creates friction that slows you down.

The Honest Answer

For hobby projects and personal use, you don’t need Git. But you need something that lets you recover when AI breaks things.

AI coding assistants are unpredictable. They delete files, break working code, make changes you didn’t ask for. If you’re coding without any form of version control, you’re one bad AI suggestion away from losing hours of work.

For professional work, you should learn Git eventually. It’s the industry standard. Every job expects it. Collaboration requires it. Deployment usually needs it. But “eventually” doesn’t have to be today.

What You Actually Need Right Now

Separate the different problems Git solves:

Recovery is non-negotiable. You must have a way to restore your code when things break. This can be Git, but it can also be automatic snapshots, editor checkpoints, or system backups.

Collaboration matters if you work with others. If you’re building alone, you don’t need this yet.

Deployment usually requires Git, but many platforms have workarounds for simpler use cases.

A Practical Path

If you’re just starting out and want to focus on building:

First, set up automatic protection. mrq captures every file change without requiring commits or decisions:

npm install -g mrq-cli
mrq login
mrq watch

Now you can code freely with AI, experiment with risky prompts, and recover instantly when things break. No Git knowledge required.

Later, when you need to deploy or collaborate, learn the Git basics. It’s not as complicated as it seems. Most daily use is just three commands:

git add .
git commit -m "What you did"
git push

Ignore branches, merging, rebasing, and everything else until you actually need them. Most developers use 10% of Git’s features 90% of the time.

The Minimum Git You Need

If you decide to learn Git now, here’s the minimum:

Initialize a repository:

git init

Save your current state:

git add .
git commit -m "Description of what's working"

Restore if something breaks:

git checkout .

That’s genuinely enough to get started. Everything else can wait.

The Pragmatic Setup

What we recommend to developers coding primarily with AI:

mrq for continuous protection. It runs in the background, captures everything, and lets you recover instantly.
Git for milestones and deployment. Commit when you finish something meaningful or when you need to deploy.
Learn Git properly when you have a reason. Collaboration, complex workflows, or job requirements are all good reasons. “Because people say I should” is not.

You can always add more Git sophistication later. You can’t always recover code you lost because you didn’t have protection.

Start with protection. Add the rest as you need it.

Version Control Explained for AI-First Developers - Full guide to version control
How to Not Lose Your Project When Using ChatGPT or Claude - Practical protection
Cursor Checkpoints vs Git vs mrq - Comparing options

mrq is automatic versioning for AI coding. Protection now, Git when you’re ready.