git detached HEAD: 'You are in detached HEAD state' - I made commits and switched away. How do I keep them?

Cause: HEAD points straight at a commit rather than a branch, which happens when you check out a tag, a commit hash, a remote branch by full name, or use --detach (also during some rebases and submodule updates). Commits made there are referenced only by HEAD. When you switch to a branch they become unreferenced and Git's garbage collection can eventually delete them. Fix: 1. If you are still detached and want to keep the work: git switch -c my-work (or git checkout -b my-work). This creates a branch at the current commit and attaches HEAD to it. Alternative that stays detached: git branch my-work or git tag my-work. 2. If you already switched away, find the commit in the reflog: git reflog (or git log -g). Pick the hash of your last detached commit and run git branch recovered <hash>. 3. Then merge or cherry-pick that branch into where it belongs, for example git switch main && git merge recovered. 4. If you only wanted to look around and have no commits to keep, just git switch main (or the branch you want); nothing is lost. Tip: use git switch --detach <commit> on purpose for experiments, and create a branch the moment the experiment is worth keeping. Verify: git branch --list shows your new branch, git log <branch> shows the commits, and git status reports "On branch ..." rather than a detached HEAD. Sources: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout https://git-scm.com/docs/git-switch