Great question — sounds like you’re ready to clean up and organize your Git branches in a way that avoids collisions (like the README overwrite) and gives each area a clear purpose. Here's a solid structure you can use:

🔧 Recommended Branch Setup

  • 🟢 main

  • ✅ Production-ready, stable code.

  • 🔐 Protected (no direct pushes).

  • 📁 Clean structure: only essential files (like README.md, package.json, src/).

🟡 acceptance

  • 🚧 Pre-release/staging branch.

  • 🧪 Used for QA/testing before merging to main.

  • 🔄 Merges come from frontend-develop, backend-develop, or hotfix branches.

  • Never for documentation changes.

🎨 frontend-develop

  • 🧠 Active development for frontend.

  • 🔄 Merged into acceptance when features are ready.

  • 👨‍💻 Collaborate here on components, styling, etc.

🧠 backend-develop

  • 🧠 Active backend development.

  • 🔄 Merged into acceptance when ready.

  • 💾 APIs, databases, business logic.

📚 documentation

  • 📝 Central place for all documentation.

  • 🔄 Docs from backend-readme, frontend-readme, etc., merged here.

  • 📁 Folder structure to separate doc types:

bash

/docs
  /backend
    README.md
  /frontend
    README.md
  /general
    contributing.md
    architecture.md

✅ Clean Up Plan
Here’s how you could fix things and realign:

  1. Fix the README Overwrite If main’s README.md got overwritten:

bash

# Checkout main
git checkout main

# View commit history for README.md
git log README.md

# Restore a previous version
git checkout  -- README.md
git commit -m "Restore main README"
git push
  1. Move Documentation to the Right Place Take the changes you made in backend-readme and move them to:

bash

documentation/docs/backend/README.md

You can delete the backend-readme branch after the move (or archive it).

  1. Restrict What Goes Where 
Branch            Purpose           What should go in it
main              Production            Final code, root README.md
acceptance    Pre-release/testing   Tested features only
frontend-develop  Frontend features Frontend code only
backend-develop   Backend features  Backend code only
documentation     Docs only         All documentation, organized in /docs

📦 Bonus: .gitignore and README Tip

  • In your main README.md, just keep high-level info: project name, setup, contributors, etc.

  • For in-depth backend/frontend docs, link to:

scss

See full backend documentation [here](./docs/backend/README.md)

Want help writing a shell script to automate cleaning this up, or want a visual git flow chart?