Save Points

In Lesson 3 you broke your page and the agent put it back — using its memory of the conversation. That worked because the disaster was thirty seconds old. But memory-based rescue has limits: close the session, and "put it back" gets shaky.

Games solved this problem decades ago: save points. Fight the boss recklessly, die horribly, reload. Today your project gets the same physics. The tool underneath is called git — the same one professionals use — but here's the deal this course offers: you will use it in plain English and learn zero commands. The agent speaks git so you don't have to.

What you'll plate today

A project where any state you've saved can be brought back in one sentence — proven, because you'll wreck the site worse than Lesson 3 and reload like nothing happened.

Ingredients

• Your first-kitchen folder (now with CLAUDE.md — it'll be saved too)
• About 25 minutes

Cook

1. Install the save system

Set up save points for this project — use git. Then make the first
save point now, with a plain-English note describing what this
project is. Tell me what got saved.

It will ask permission to run a few commands (that's git init and friends — approve). Two things to know, then forget: the saves live in a hidden folder inside your project, and nothing leaves your computer. No account, no cloud, no GitHub today.

2. Save like you mean it

Make a small change first — order anything ("give the footer a little more presence"). Then:

Make a save point: "footer upgrade".

That's the whole ritual. Change you like → one sentence → saved forever. Add the reflex to your notebook while you're here:

Add a rule to CLAUDE.md: after any change I say I like, offer to
make a save point with a short plain-English note.

3. The demolition (bigger this time)

Lesson 3 broke the styling. Today we go further:

Ruin index.html: delete the styling, scramble my sections into the
wrong order, and replace my name with "CHAOS GOBLIN".

Refresh the browser and take a good look at the wreckage. In the old world — the world without save points — this is the moment your stomach drops. Now:

Restore everything to the last save point.

Refresh. Everything back: styling, order, your name. The wreckage didn't just get fixed — it got erased from reality. That's the difference between the agent remembering and the project remembering.

4. Read your history

Show me my save points as a simple list, newest first, in plain words.

That list is your project's diary, and it grows with you. One more session habit from today onward: save before every experiment, experiment with total courage.

When it burns

• It mentions GitHub, remotes, or "pushing" — say: "Local saves only for now, no GitHub." Putting your saves in the cloud is a real and good thing — for the day you want it, the recipe is here.
• It says there's nothing to restore — you probably never made the save in step 2. Check: "list my save points." No list, no saves — make one now.
• Words like branch, merge, HEAD appear — professional seasoning you don't need yet. "Explain that in kitchen terms or skip it."
• You restored and lost a change you actually liked — restore points are snapshots; anything after the snapshot goes. The cure is the habit: save small, save often.

Order up

□ Save points are installed (and live only on your machine)
□ You made at least two saves with plain-English notes
□ You wrecked the site badly — and restored it in one sentence
□ CLAUDE.md now reminds you to save after changes you like

Notice what you have now, quietly assembled over five lessons: a project you built by talking, that remembers your taste, that cannot be permanently broken. There's exactly one thing left it can't do: be seen by anyone else.

Next up — Lesson 06: Serve It. The big one. Your page leaves your laptop and gets a real URL on the real internet — and you open it on your phone.

Stuck on a step? Question box below.