Repair Git state

Understand the operation and ownership before changing history. Fix the requested problem without making unrelated user work disappear.

Phase 1: Inspect and preserve

• Read status, branch/upstream, remotes, worktrees, staged/unstaged/untracked changes, and any active merge, rebase, cherry-pick or revert. Check history/reflog as needed.
• Preserve valuable local work before a destructive recovery. Never reset, clean or delete an unfamiliar file or branch just to make a command succeed.

Phase 2: Resolve the actual operation

• Read conflict markers, index stages, the common base and both intended changes. Ours/theirs flips between merge and rebase/cherry-pick; never apply one side blindly.
• Resolve behavior and affected callers, run relevant checks, stage only resolved paths, and continue with the operation-specific command. Confirm no conflict markers remain.
• Abort is not a universal undo: Git may be unable to restore pre-existing uncommitted changes. Inspect what it preserves first, then verify the resulting state instead of promising no harm.

Phase 3: Handle stacks and publication deliberately

• Check the installed stack tool, version and help before assuming semantics.
• Stack tools differ: some restack locally, others sync by pulling, pushing and deleting branches. Read the dry run and scope first, use a local-only mode for local repairs, and account for branches skipped because another worktree owns them. Syncing a stack is not a local whole-stack rebase.
• Rewrite published history only when authorized and necessary. Record the remote tip being replaced and use an explicit lease: --force-with-lease=refs/heads/<branch>:<reviewed-remote-oid>. A bare lease can be weakened by background fetches. A rejected lease means reinspect, never retry the force-push. Prefer a simpler valid repair when one meets the request.

Phase 4: Clean up only requested obsolete work

Match repository, branch identity and current tip to the merged work. Check later commits, upstream, all worktrees and unpushed changes. A reused branch name or old merged change request is not proof of obsolescence, and git branch -d may compare against upstream instead of the default branch. Use dry-run discovery and paginated results; keep uncertain items.

Anti-patterns

• Blind ours/theirs, reset --hard or clean -fd as routine troubleshooting.
• Replaying an interrupted external action before checking its outcome.
• Overstating what abort, branch deletion or a bare force-with-lease guarantees.
• Pushing when the user asked only for local conflict resolution.

Done when

• The Git operation is resolved and the resulting graph and index are inspected.
• Intended behavior and unrelated local work are preserved, with relevant checks run.
• Any authorized remote change is confirmed against the actual remote ref.

Resume flow-work or flow-ship at the stage the user originally requested.