finishing-a-development-branch

When to use

• Implementation of a feature or bug fix is complete on a development branch
• All planned commits are in, the user is ready to hand off
• You are about to say "done" and suggest the next action
• The branch has been idle and the user wants to decide its fate

Do NOT use when:

• Still implementing — use targeted verification, not the ship gate
• A PR already exists and is mid-review — use receiving-code-review
• Only documentation changed and no tests apply — simplify to commit + PR without the full gate

Goal

Route a finished branch to its next state with evidence — merged, pushed for PR, parked, or discarded. Never let a half-verified branch become a PR. Never destroy work without explicit confirmation.

The Iron Law

NO MERGE, NO PR, NO DISCARD WITHOUT VERIFIED TESTS + EXPLICIT CHOICE.

Skipping verification because "it worked a minute ago" is how broken main happens. Discarding because "I assumed the user meant it" is how work gets lost.

Procedure

1. Inspect the current branch state

Before presenting any options, gather context. Do not assume — check:

• git status — clean, or still dirty?
• git log --oneline <base>..HEAD — what commits are actually on this branch?
• git branch --show-current — the branch name you will be operating on
• Remote state — is the branch pushed? Is there an open PR already?

If a PR already exists for this branch, stop — this is not a finishing step, route to receiving-code-review or fix-pr-comments instead.

2. Verify readiness

Run the end-of-work gate before presenting any options — see verify-completion-evidence. Steps 1–3 run only when quality.local_auto_run: true; under the default (false / missing) skip them without asking — the user runs quality tools manually, remote CI on the PR is the authoritative gate, and the readiness report says "quality gates delegated to remote CI" instead of claiming them green:

1. Targeted tests green
2. Full test suite green
3. Quality pipeline green — the project's full sequence (type-checker → auto-fixer dry-run → linter → type-checker; e.g. PHPStan → Rector → ECS → PHPStan for Laravel-PHP, tsc → eslint --fix → eslint → tsc for TS, mypy → ruff --fix → ruff → mypy for Python)
4. git status clean — nothing unstaged, no stray files
5. Branch is pushed or explicitly marked local-only

If any executed step fails → stop. Report the failure, do not present ship options. Fixing the failure comes first.

3. Determine the base branch

# Default: main
BASE=main

# Stacked PR: parent branch
BASE=$(git config branch.$(git branch --show-current).merge | sed 's|refs/heads/||')

If ambiguous, ask: "This branch splits from <guess> — correct?" before presenting options.

4. Present the four options — numbered, no narration

Ask the user exactly one question:

Implementation is verified. What now?

1. Open a Pull Request on <base-branch>
2. Merge locally into <base-branch> (for projects without a PR flow)
3. Keep the branch as-is — I'll handle it later
4. Discard all work on this branch

Do not add recommendations unless the user asks. Each option leads to a different sub-procedure (steps 5a–5d).

5a. Option 1 — Open a PR

1. Ensure the branch is up to date with the base → prepare-for-review
2. Self-review the full diff → review-changes
3. Write the PR description → create-pr-description
4. Open the PR → create-pr
5. Confirm the PR opened green, not red

See requesting-code-review for the surrounding discipline.

5b. Option 2 — Merge locally

Use only when the project policy is "no PR required" (solo repos, spike branches, private tooling). For team repos, default to Option 1.

git checkout <base-branch>
git pull --ff-only
git merge --no-ff <feature-branch>
# Re-run the full test suite on the merged tree
<test command>
# Only if green:
git branch -d <feature-branch>

If the post-merge test run fails → git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD, fix on the feature branch, restart from Option 1/2.

5c. Option 3 — Keep as-is

• Push the branch to origin if not already pushed (safeguards the work)
• Report the branch name and the last commit SHA back to the user
• Do not delete the worktree, do not force-push

5d. Option 4 — Discard

Confirmation gate — require a typed answer, not "y":

This will permanently remove:
- Local branch <name>
- Remote branch <name> (if pushed)
- Commits: <list of SHAs + subjects>

Type "discard <name>" to confirm.

Only on exact match:

git checkout <base-branch>
git branch -D <feature-branch>
# Remove remote only if the user confirms a second time
git push origin --delete <feature-branch>

Log the discarded SHAs so the work can be recovered via git reflog within the reflog TTL if needed.

6. Clean up worktrees

If the branch lives in a git worktree:

• Options 1, 2, 4 → git worktree remove <path> after the branch terminal state
• Option 3 → keep the worktree

Output format

After the chosen option completes, report:

1. What happened — single sentence ("PR #123 opened", "Merged into main as abcdef", "Branch discarded")
2. Evidence — exit codes / PR URL / commit SHA
3. Cleanup state — worktree removed / kept, branch deleted / retained
4. Next step — e.g. "Awaiting review" / "Main is one commit ahead"

Gotchas

• Option 1 (PR) on a red CI — the PR opens but is not actually reviewable; check the CI status before reporting success
• Option 2 (local merge) with fast-forward only on a diverged base silently fails — the merge command aborts but the report can look successful if the exit code is not checked
• Option 4 (discard) on a branch that is already the upstream of another local branch — the dependent branch is orphaned
• Force-pushing after a PR is opened can lose the reviewer's line-comments — prefer additional commits during review
• git branch -d vs -D — lowercase -d refuses unmerged branches, uppercase -D forces; only use -D inside the confirmed discard flow
• On stacked PRs, the base is not main — opening a PR to main invalidates the stack

Do NOT

• Do NOT present ship options while tests or quality checks are red
• Do NOT add rationale or recommendations to the four numbered options — the user decides
• Do NOT discard a branch without a typed confirmation including the branch name
• Do NOT force-delete a remote branch without user confirmation
• Do NOT silently change the base branch between verification and ship
• Do NOT mix any other cleanup into the discard step

Anti-patterns

• Presenting three options and phrasing the fourth as "or we can discard if you want" — buries the destructive option
• Running the full gate inside this skill and at the start of create-pr — duplicates work. Trust the gate result if nothing changed in between
• Merging local + opening PR at the same time — pick one
• Asking "ready to ship?" without listing the four concrete options

When to hand over to another skill / command

• Final pre-merge verification → verify-completion-evidence
• Rebasing the stack before PR → prepare-for-review
• Writing the commit for any last-minute tweaks → commit, conventional-commits-writing
• Self-review walkthrough → review-changes
• Creating the PR → create-pr
• Processing review comments after the PR is open → receiving-code-review

Validation checklist

Before reporting "done" after this skill runs:

• Full gate (tests + quality pipeline) verified green in this turn when quality.local_auto_run: true — under the default false the report states "quality gates delegated to remote CI" instead
• Base branch determined and confirmed with the user when ambiguous
• Exactly four numbered options were presented, no narration added
• User's choice recorded literally, not reinterpreted
• Sub-procedure for the chosen option completed end-to-end
• Worktree state handled per option (remove for 1/2/4, keep for 3)
• Destructive actions had typed confirmation including branch name
• Final report includes evidence (PR URL, SHA, or exit code)