Even if I use git exclusively in the command prompt, I usually have a working copy where I edit files, and another copy that's read only where I switch branches without care, do the binary search bisect thing and so on.

I don't remember what happened for me to start doing this, but it saves so many headaches that I don't care.

All the graphic Git clients cause me panic. I have Sublime-Merge has a read only thing, because it shows diffs in a nice format. But I am still not ready to commit something from it.