GitHub Sync Guide — VIF Trading System

The Problem (What Was Happening)

Your desktop had 670 local commits that were never pushed to GitHub.
Your laptop was pulling from GitHub (which was stale), so it never saw those changes.
Result: two devices drifting further apart every day.

The Fix (One-Time — Desktop Only)

Open a terminal in C:\Users\marti\vif-trading-system and run:

git push origin main

This pushes all 670 commits up to GitHub. After this, GitHub has the full, up-to-date codebase.

Then on your laptop, run:

git pull origin main

Both devices are now in sync.

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Ongoing Workflow (Do This Every Session)

Option A — Use the sync script (easiest)

Double-click sync.bat (Windows) at the start and end of every work session.

It automatically:

1. Commits any uncommitted local changes
2. Fetches from GitHub
3. Pulls new commits from the other device
4. Pushes your local commits up

Option B — Manual git commands

At the START of a session (get the other device's changes):

git pull origin main

At the END of a session (send your changes to the other device):

git add -A
git commit -m "your message here"
git push origin main

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Golden Rule

Pull before you start. Push when you're done.

If you always do this, the two devices will never diverge again.

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What's Excluded from Sync (by .gitignore)

These files are intentionally local-only and NOT synced via GitHub:

What	Why
.env	Contains your API key — never put this on GitHub
data/*.pkl, data/*.csv	Cached market data — regenerates automatically
reports/	Generated output — regenerates on each run
logs/	Runtime logs — local only
.claude/settings.local.json	Machine-specific Claude settings
venv/, env/	Python virtual environments — install fresh on each machine

Important: After pulling on the laptop for the first time, you'll need to:

1. Copy your .env file manually (or recreate it with your API key)
2. Run pip install -r requirements.txt to install dependencies
3. Your reports/ and logs/ will be empty — that's normal, they'll fill up as the system runs

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Troubleshooting

"Push rejected" or "non-fast-forward"

Both devices made commits at the same time. Fix:

git pull --rebase origin main   # bring in remote changes first
git push origin main             # now push

Merge conflict

Two devices edited the same file differently. Git will mark the conflicts inside the file. Open the file, look for <<<<<<, resolve it, then:

git add <file>
git rebase --continue   # if you used --rebase
# or
git commit              # if you used regular merge
git push origin main

"fatal: not a git repository"

You're in the wrong folder. Make sure you're inside C:\Users\marti\vif-trading-system.

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Quick Reference Card

START of session:   git pull origin main
END of session:     git add -A && git commit -m "msg" && git push origin main
Or just:            double-click sync.bat

Test auto-push