You cloned the project and you're ready to start working on your task...

STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP

Forking the project is similar to cloning and you are able to do all the of the next steps without knowing. When you fork the project you create a copy of the project that was forked. That in itself isn't bad, but you will not receive any of the changes other programmers merge into the original project. If you commit any changes to your forked project the original project will never see them.

This is a red flag if you find yourself on the branch shown in the image below. Do not make any direct changes to this branch.

What you should do instead is create a new branch from that branch.

With your new branch ready, you can publish it for everyone to view. Or you can decide not to publish it if you want to test several things. But for handling your tasks, you should publish the branch since it will need to be reviewed later.