Version Control for Surgical Data Science: A Primer on Git and GitHub

Surgical research increasingly relies on computational analysis of large clinical datasets, and major journals now request code availability statements for publication. Yet most surgical trainees and faculty receive no formal training in software version control, despite its central role in reproducible research. This article provides a practical introduction to Git, a widely used version control system in academic and industrial software development, and GitHub, a leading hosting platform. The presentation implements workflows specific to surgical research, including retrospective registry analysis, multi-institutional collaboration, and reviewer reproducibility requests. Core concepts covered include the four mental models that are the basis for Git usage (repository, commit, branch, and remote), the daily edit-stage-commit cycle that is the dominant workflow, and the use of branches and pull requests for collaboration. Attention is given to clinical data security: identifiable patient data must never enter a version-controlled repository, and the article details the use of a.gitignore file to prevent inadvertent commits. The article also illustrates the installation of community-developed tools through a worked example involving Stash, an open-source persistent memory layer for artificial intelligence (AI) research assistants. Three recovery scenarios are demonstrated: restoring deleted code, reproducing the exact state of a manuscript at submission, and resolving merge conflicts. This allows surgical researchers to adopt version control practices that protect their work, support reproducibility, and meet emerging standards for transparent computational research.