We all know the routine. You run git add, git commit, git push, and hope it works. This workshop is for the part where it doesn’t.

Everyone clones a shared GitLab repository and works through the full workflow. You’ll create your own branch, add your hacker handle to a text file, commit, and push to a staging branch. We’re not going to avoid the hard stuff. We’re going to create merge conflicts on purpose so you can learn how to fix them in an environment where it’s safe to make mistakes.

The goal is actual understanding, not memorizing commands. Why branching matters, what local versus remote really means, how to read a merge conflict, and what to do when you break something, which happens to everyone. Each concept gets used right away, so you’re not watching me do demos; you’re doing the work.

At the end, we generate a word cloud from everyone’s contributions using Python. It’s a concrete way to see how distributed collaboration actually works, and you walk out with something that shows what the room built together.

This is for students, security folks, and anyone who wants to stop feeling anxious about version control. Bring a laptop, make a GitLab account beforehand, and be willing to break things.