Cleanup Workspace

Cleanup Workspace

Post-merge housekeeping: verify the active dev branch landed in main, then prune it locally and on origin.

When to Use

After a pull request authored on a dev* branch has been merged into main and the user wants to return the workspace to a clean state on the updated main branch.

Safety Rules

• NEVER delete a branch that is not fully merged into origin/main. If the merge check fails, STOP immediately and report to the user — do not pass -D to force delete.
• NEVER run on main itself. If the current branch is main, abort with a clear message.
• NEVER discard uncommitted changes. If the working tree is dirty, abort and ask the user to commit or stash first.
• The remote name is assumed to be origin. If origin is not present, abort and ask the user which remote to use.

Method

Step 1 — Capture state and validate preconditions

Run these checks in parallel:

git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD          # current branch name
git status --porcelain                   # must be empty (clean working tree)
git remote                               # must contain 'origin'

Abort with a clear message if:

• Current branch is main (nothing to clean up).
• git status --porcelain is non-empty (uncommitted changes).
• origin remote does not exist.

Save the current branch name as DEV_BRANCH for later steps.

Step 2 — Fetch latest refs and verify merge status

git fetch origin --prune

Then check whether every commit on DEV_BRANCH is reachable from origin/main:

git merge-base --is-ancestor <DEV_BRANCH> origin/main

• Exit code 0 → branch is fully merged. Proceed to Step 3.
• Exit code 1 → branch has commits not in origin/main. STOP and report to the user:
  • Show the unmerged commits: git log --oneline origin/main..<DEV_BRANCH>
  • Tell the user the branch is not merged and the skill will not delete it.
  • Do not continue to subsequent steps.

Step 3 — Switch to main and pull

git checkout main
git pull origin main --ff-only

Use --ff-only so the pull aborts cleanly if something unexpected happened upstream rather than creating a merge commit silently.

Step 4 — Delete the local dev branch

git branch -d <DEV_BRANCH>

Use lowercase -d (safe delete). It refuses to delete if not merged — which should not happen since Step 2 already verified the merge, but the double-check is intentional. Do not fall back to -D.

Step 5 — Delete the remote dev branch if it still exists

First check whether the remote branch is still present (the maintainer may have already deleted it after merging the PR):

git ls-remote --heads origin <DEV_BRANCH>

• Output empty → remote already deleted. Skip the delete and report "remote branch already removed".
• Output non-empty → delete it:

git push origin --delete <DEV_BRANCH>

If the push fails (permission denied, protected branch, etc.), report the error to the user — do not retry with force.

Step 6 — Report final state

Summarize what changed in a short message:

• Current branch (should be main) and its short SHA.
• Whether the local dev branch was deleted.
• Whether the remote dev branch was deleted or was already gone.

Example Walk-through

User finishes work on dev-14156 which has been merged into main via PR:

Step 1: HEAD=dev-14156, working tree clean, origin present.        ✓
Step 2: git fetch origin --prune
        git merge-base --is-ancestor dev-14156 origin/main → 0     ✓ merged
Step 3: git checkout main
        git pull origin main --ff-only                              → main now at <sha>
Step 4: git branch -d dev-14156                                     → deleted
Step 5: git ls-remote --heads origin dev-14156 → non-empty
        git push origin --delete dev-14156                          → deleted
Step 6: Report: on main @ <sha>; local dev-14156 deleted; remote dev-14156 deleted.

Notes

• The skill is a pure git workflow — no IDA Pro MCP or codebase analysis is involved.
• If the user wants to clean up a different branch than the one currently checked out, they should switch to it first; this skill only operates on HEAD.
• The skill never force-deletes (-D) or force-pushes. If a step refuses, that is a signal to stop and surface the situation, not to override.