Main Branch: A Newsletter About Fundamentals First Always

I started a newsletter. In 2025. I know what you're thinking.

But here's the thing - every week, I talk to developers who are drowning in AI hype while still manually managing merge conflicts.

Fundamentals first, always.

That's the tagline for Main Branch, my newsletter about developer workflows and the tools that actually ship code. Not the features that make headlines. The ones you use 50 times a day.

Why Another Newsletter?

I've been a Developer Advocate at GitHub for a while now, and I've noticed something: the gap between what gets announced and what gets adopted is massive. Not because the features aren't good - because nobody's talking about the practical stuff.

Like, did you know workflow dispatch now supports 25 inputs instead of 10? Or that you can comment on unchanged lines in PRs now? These aren't splashy features. They're the ones that save you 20 minutes every single day.

I wanted a place to write about those. No corporate speak. No hype cycles. Just peer-to-peer communication about the tools we use to build software.

The Deep Cuts

We're almost at 100 subscribers (seriously, thank you), and I've been covering things like:

• Git commands most people miss - git reflog to recover from bad rebases, git bisect for binary-searching bugs, git fetch --prune to stop chasing branches that don't exist
• The Files Changed tab redesign - batch apply suggested changes, see PR descriptions without tab-hopping, let Copilot group your changes into scannable chunks
• GitHub Actions security hardening - OIDC tokens with check_run_id for compliance, pull_request_target lockdown preventing vulnerable workflows on stale branches
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) explained - why it's not an API, how dynamic toolsets solve the 100-tools problem, and the --tools flag for surgical control
• 1 vCPU Linux runners - because not everything needs 4 cores to run npm install
• CodeRabbit + Copilot workflows - one understands intent, one catches runtime bugs, together they click

Every issue I make zero assumptions that you already know this stuff. Because honestly? Most of us don't. And that's totally fine.

One reader told me: "This is the first GitHub newsletter I've read where I learned something I could use that same day." That's the whole point.

I'm so grateful for your time, here is my thank you!

To celebrate hitting 100 subscribers, I'm doing a giveaway next week. Subscribe to Main Branch and you're automatically entered.

Subscribe here: mainbranch.beehiiv.com/subscribe

What's Next

I'm doubling down on the stuff that doesn't make launch keynotes but ships production code. More CLI workflows. More real-world configurations. More "here's how you actually do this" content.

If you're tired of AI hype and just want to write better code with the tools you already have, Main Branch is for you.

Fundamentals outlast hype cycles. Every single time.