finishing-a-development-branch

Finishing a Development Branch

Overview

Guide completion of development work by presenting clear options and handling chosen workflow.

Core principle: Verify tests → Present options → Execute choice → Clean up.

Announce at start: "I'm using the finishing-a-development-branch skill to complete this work."

The Process

Step 1: Verify Tests

Before presenting options, verify tests pass:

# Run project's test suite
npm test / cargo test / pytest / go test ./...

If tests fail:

Tests failing (<N> failures). Must fix before completing:

[Show failures]

Cannot proceed with merge/PR until tests pass.

Stop. Don't proceed to Step 2.

If tests pass: Continue to Step 2.

Step 2: Determine Base Branch

# Try common base branches
git merge-base HEAD main 2>/dev/null || git merge-base HEAD master 2>/dev/null

Or ask: "This branch split from main - is that correct?"

Read AGENTS.md and maintainer documentation, then inspect effective protection for the base branch. If pull requests or required checks are enforced, mark local merge as unavailable and use the repository's guarded PR/merge workflow. In agentic-awesome-skills, defer maintainer merges to antigravity-maintainer-batch-release and npm run merge:batch.

Step 3: Present Options

For an unprotected base branch, present exactly these 4 options:

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