A git branch is a movable pointer to a commit, representing an independent line of development within a Git repository. Branches allow concurrent work on different features or tasks without affecting the main development line. Creating a branch is a lightweight operation: git stores a branch as a 41-byte file containing only the hash of the commit it points to. Branches can be merged back into the main line when their work is complete. In this vault, the main branch is the single development line; feature branches are not used unless explicitly requested, because emsenn edits the vault concurrently in Obsidian and a single-branch workflow avoids merge overhead.