I'm working on a pattern library project for which I'm sharing previews of a "prod" branch via Netlify, as opposed to the "master" branch, which is where I'm doing all the work. (I know this is non-standard. It happened. It's fine.) Every dang time I switch to the prod branch to merge in master, I forget I'm on prod, and I'd go merrily on my way, jamming new stuff directly onto prod, which is not what I wanted to do.
"There has to be a way to..." I thought, and, it turns out, yes, there is a way to stop myself from committing directly to a specific branch in git.