PR Workflow

Standard operating procedure for preparing, opening, and managing Pull Requests (PR) and Merge Requests (MR). Default to GitHub (gh CLI); for other platforms, see platform-tools.md.

Preflight

• Base Sync: Before creating a feature branch or starting a new task, fetch and sync the default base branch (git fetch origin && git checkout main && git pull --ff-only or branch directly off origin/main).
• Clean Working Tree: Verify git status is clean before editing or opening PRs.
• Verification: Run local tests and linters in the primary session rather than a subagent before opening or updating PRs; a failure needs their full output.

Worker routing

Request the cheapest capable model and lowest sufficient effort (low for routine); unsupported overrides inherit parent/configured defaults. Report requested/actual only from runtime metadata, else inherited/unknown.

If a named role is unavailable/unsupported or returns an explicit pre-execution dispatch/runtime error (for example capacity, rate limit, rejected model, or launch error), try one generic fallback that preserves the named worker's tools and permissions:

• Log: exact approved local artifact only; reject unsafe input; report causes and events without fetching runs.
• Evidence: caller's scenario only; stop what it started; no Git mutation or upload; report per-step expected, observed, verdict, and paths.

Otherwise use primary; a generic pre-execution failure also falls back to primary. Once a worker begins its assigned workload, its rejection or failure is final: no other worker, primary rerun, stronger model, or higher effort. If a dispatch error does not reveal whether execution began, stop that dispatch and report the ambiguity; do not retry or duplicate that workload.

Branching & Guardrails

• Branch Guard: Stay on feature branches; never push or merge directly into the default base branch without explicit approval.
• Base Discovery: Detect the base branch dynamically from repo evidence (origin/HEAD, PR target).
• Fork Safety: Confirm with user before opening PRs on upstream or third-party forks.
• Stacked PRs: Prefer native stacks over hand-set feature-branch bases — GitHub gh stack (public preview; official github/gh-stack skill), GitLab glab stack (experimental; bundled glab-stack skill). Hand-stacked: merge bottom-up, retargeting each PR onto the default branch first — closing keywords only fire there.

Commit Hygiene

• Atomic Commits: Keep commits single-concern. Include release/changelog URLs on single dependency bumps.
• Non-interactive: Pass GIT_EDITOR=true or --no-edit on git rebase/commit/merge to bypass GUI editor prompts.

Issue Linking

• Auto-close: Reserve Closes #N, Fixes #N, or Resolves #N solely for PRs that auto-close the issue on merge.
• Part-of: Use Part of #N or See #N for epic tracking and multi-PR tasks. GitHub matches those tokens even inside negation — never write Closes #N (or Fix/Resolve) next to an issue you must not close.
• Commit messages: A closing keyword before #N in a commit message closes the issue once the commit reaches the default branch. GitHub and GitLab both accept a colon after the keyword, so a Conventional fix: #N ... subject closes #N. In commits for a multi-PR issue, keep the keyword off the number: fix(scope): describe change (#N).
• No Tracked Issue: When a PR has no tracked issue, drop the Related Issue section entirely — never leave an unlinked Closes # or empty issue marker in the PR body.

PR Lifecycle (GitHub Primary)

For GitLab, Gitea, Azure DevOps, or Bitbucket, see platform-tools.md.

For a caller-selected remote failure log, classify and scope the source before delegation. The primary downloads only that log to a local artifact; the worker never fetches remote logs or discovers unrelated runs. Low-risk build, lint, and test artifacts may go to a named log-summarizer after caller review. Potentially sensitive logs require a sanitized artifact and residual-secret gate first; otherwise keep them in primary. Use the worker-routing fallback above when the named summarizer is unavailable or unsupported.

Before writing the request body, read the repo's docs/agents/pull-request.md (or equivalent: docs/agents/merge-request.md, native .github / GitLab templates) and follow its description shape and visual table, keying the visual to the user-visible change — a CLI or UI output change wins over an internal flowchart even when one exists. Where the table asks for a before/after pair, show both states, not just the after. Keep a multi-line text capture in a fenced block of its own under its Before or After label.

For a running-app capture of more than a step or two, hand a named evidence-collector the scenario (entrypoint, fixtures, steps, expected observations); on Cursor CLI keep it in primary. Judge the captures, mask flagged regions, then --attach.

Create PR

gh pr create --title "<type>(<scope>): <summary>" --body "<description>"

Update PR (Amend / Force-push)

gh pr edit <pr_number> --title "<updated_title>" --body "<updated_body>"

Guard body rewrites: fetch, edit, and write back a PR/MR/issue body in one set -euo pipefail block; never write an empty or shrunken body (test -s) — see body-rewrite.md.