4. Collaborate Using GitHub (10-15%)

Repositories hold the code; this phase covers the tools GitHub gives people for talking about it — tracking work with issues, proposing and reviewing changes through pull requests, having open-ended conversations in discussions, staying informed without drowning in noise, and publishing lighter-weight content that doesn't belong in the main codebase.

Think of issues, pull requests, and discussions as three different rooms for three different kinds of conversation — mixing them up is a common miss, which is exactly what the exam tests when it asks which tool fits a given scenario. ⚠️ Exam Trap: a closing keyword like "Closes #12" only auto-closes an issue when it's merged through the default branch — using it elsewhere silently does nothing.