&gt;  &quot;I find [the index] a critical part of git&#x27;s culture of making small commits with one logical change each.&quot;<p>&gt; I&#x27;ve never understood why the index has to be forced on everyone for every commit.<p>You can generally bypass it if making a simple commit; I use &quot;git commit -a&quot; all the time.  But every time you use tools like &quot;git add&quot; on individual files, or &quot;git add -p&quot; on parts of files, you rely on the index.<p>Understanding the index also helps greatly when you need to do a merge, cherry-pick, or other similar operation; you need a staging area to work in, separate from the work tree.