If the folder is not a git repository yet

If the folder you start tCode in is not already a git repository, tCode offers to initialize one the first time it runs there, specifically so checkpoints have somewhere to actually live.

It deliberately will not do this inside your home directory, since that is almost never an actual project, and turning it into a git repository by accident would be considerably more disruptive than simply not having checkpoints available there.

If you decline the offer, or if git genuinely is not installed on the machine at all, checkpoints and /rewind are simply unavailable in that specific folder; everything else about tCode continues to work normally without them.

This is never a hard failure that stops tCode from starting; a folder without git-backed checkpoints behaves exactly like tCode did before checkpoints existed as a feature, fully usable, just without the specific safety net /rewind provides.

If you change your mind later, initializing git yourself in that folder, git init, run once, is enough for tCode to pick up checkpoint support the next time it starts there; nothing further needs to be configured on tCode's side.