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Here you'll make changes (say multiple commits, working to get things right), test, and perform a code review with a pull request. The pull request may be closed without merging into master; which will be expanded upon below. When the pull request has been approved ...

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vi VERSION  # Or Changelog, or whatever
git commit -a -m 'Prepare Release 1.0.1'
git tag -s -m 'Release 1.0.1' 1.0.1 hotfix/x  # You are tagging this here on the topic branch!
git push -u origin hotfix/x 1.0.1

At this point, the hotfix and its tag will be available to the public and the hotfix/x ref will exist publicly. (The commit for the hotfix will always exist even when you later delete the hotfix/x branch. You can merge the hotfix branch in back into master in GitHub's Pull Request page. The hotfix and its tag will be available to the public. There may be some reason why it's not desirable to merge this into master yet, but it is usually going to be a good idea to do so. You probably want to fold the fix back into the code that is currently under development and scheduled for the next release.

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