Clone and fork
A clone is a full copy of a repository on your machine, history included. A fork is your own copy on the hosting site, which you can change without asking anyone and later propose changes from.
Cloning is also how someone else's instructions reach your agent: a repository can hold files an agent reads and obeys, such as AGENTS.md or tool settings. Read those before you let it run anything. And an agent with a fork, and no write access to the original, is limited in what it can break.
Say it to your agent
“Clone this repository into a new folder, but before running anything, list what would execute: package.json scripts, any .claude, .cursor or .mcp.json config, and AGENTS.md. Show me those and wait.”