You could. I work with Firefox and that code base is huge so it's not a good idea to download 15+ gigs every time you don't know how to do something. Learning the tools is a more sustainable way to go.
Make an external worktree.
No need to re-clone the whole repo, nor stashing/commiting your work, switching branch, doing the merge, etc (which you may know how to do, but is a pain if you often need to do so)
https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree