Glossary
| Term | Plain-English meaning |
|---|---|
| Terminal / command line | A text window where you type instructions to your computer instead of clicking icons |
| PowerShell | The terminal program built into every Windows computer |
| Git Bash | A terminal program installed alongside Git that understands Mac/Linux-style commands |
| Repo (repository) | A project folder that Git/GitHub tracks the history of |
| Commit | A saved snapshot of your code at one point in time, with a message describing what changed |
| Branch | A parallel copy of your code you can experiment on without touching the main version |
| Push | Sending your commits from your laptop up to GitHub |
| Pull | Fetching commits from GitHub down onto a machine (laptop or VPS) |
| Pull Request (PR) | A proposal on GitHub to merge one branch into another, with a review step |
| Merge | Combining a branch's changes into another branch (usually main) |
| SSH | A secure way to run commands on a remote computer over the internet |
| SSH key | A private/public file pair used to prove your laptop is allowed to access a server, without typing a password |
| IP address | The numeric address (like 203.0.113.5) that identifies a specific computer on the internet |
| VPS | A computer rented from Hostinger, always on, reachable over the internet at its IP address |
| hPanel | Hostinger's web-based control panel for managing your VPS, domains, and DNS |
| Docker | A tool that packages a website with everything it needs so it runs identically anywhere |
| Container | One running instance of a Dockerized app |
| Reverse proxy | Software that sits in front of your websites and routes visitors to the right one by domain name, and handles HTTPS |
| DNS / A record | The internet's phonebook entry that maps a domain name to a server's IP address |
| Deploy | The act of getting new code actually running on the live server |
| Remote Control | A Claude Code feature that lets your phone or a browser view and steer a session that's actually running on your own machine |
| Claude Code on the web | A version of Claude Code that runs entirely on Anthropic's cloud servers instead of your machine, reachable from any browser |
| MCP | Model Context Protocol — a standard way for Claude to connect to outside tools and services (calendars, GitHub, Slack, and more) |
| Dispatch | A feature in the Claude Desktop app's Cowork tab that can spawn a Code session on your desktop from a task you message it, even from your phone |
Published