Integrate small and often: a clash found today has one suspect, found next week it has twenty.

The risk continuous integration targets is not 'my code is wrong' but 'my code does not fit with everyone else's'. Long branches let that mismatch grow silently until a painful merge day. Frequent small merges, each checked automatically, expose a clash while its cause is still fresh and obvious.

Read it once, then a question tests whether the trick stuck.