There are many ways to use a git work flow.
It may not help but here’s the way I think about it - at least in anvil.
I typically consider master to be the development branch and what will become the production app.
I would probably stick with having a published branch (linked to a published environment) and whenever I wanted to move the the published branch to a particular commit I would:
Checkout 'published' branch- Find the commit I wanted to put into production.
- right click and choose
Reset 'published' branch to here
This way the published branch just points to a particular place in the version history.
I never edit the published branch directly, I just move where it points to.
This is basically how anvil_extras treats its Published and Development versions.