Version control

Version control is a system that tracks every change to your code over time, letting you see what changed, who changed it, and roll back if something breaks. Git is the near-universal tool for this. Every change is a commit, a saved snapshot with a message, so your codebase becomes a full history rather than a single fragile folder. For a lean founder, this is non-negotiable infrastructure, even solo. It means you can experiment fearlessly, because any mistake is one command away from being undone, and it is the foundation everything else sits on: branches, pull requests, CI/CD, and collaboration with contractors or AI agents all assume version control underneath. Beyond safety, the commit history is documentation, when you return to code months later and wonder why something works the way it does, the trail of changes often holds the answer. Without it, you are one bad edit from disaster.