kreek Git Workflow
Iron Law
NEVER REWRITE SHARED HISTORY OR SKIP RECOVERY.
The host owns git mechanics and access permission. This skill owns the gates: recoverability and approval of published text.
When to Use
- Rebases, merge conflicts, bisects, reflog recovery, branch cleanup, PR history repair, force-push decisions, or any GitHub access.
When NOT to Use
- Staging, splitting, or committing reviewed work; use
commit. - Reviewing correctness; use
code-review. Refactor planning; userefactoring. CI failure triage; usedebugging.
Rules
- Branch without ceremony. Starting new work on the default branch, create
a topic branch first. On an existing topic branch, keep going unless the
new work is clearly unrelated; then branch off
mainand say which branch received the work. Do not ask which branch to use. - The host's permission system owns GitHub access. Hosts already gate network
calls and
ghunder the user's account, so do not add a second chat-level ask on top of an approval the host granted. Reserve your own questions for writes that publish user-owned text and for destructive operations. Identify the surface first (ghCLI, GitHub MCP, or host tools);ghis absent from some sandboxes, which does not mean GitHub is out of reach. - Humans approve PR and issue text before it is published. Draft the title and body locally, show them, and get approval of that exact text. Never let a tool open an editor or send unreviewed text.
- Inspect tree, branch, and upstream state before any history operation, and
stop on unexpected state. Name a recovery point (tag, branch, or reflog
entry) and whether the branch is local, solo, or shared before rewriting,
deleting, or force-pushing. Shared history is rewritten only with explicit
approval; force pushes use
--force-with-lease --force-if-includes. - Resolve conflicts by preserving intent from both sides, then run the
relevant checks. Verify with
range-diffor log inspection that intended commits remain. - Test hook policy, not hook wrappers. A hook that only execs a repo script needs no test; the script that selects commands, blocks branches, or routes files does.
- This skill never bypasses the host's sandbox or approval gates.
Tripwires
| Trigger | Do this instead | False alarm |
|---|---|---|
| "Force push should fix it" | Verify the branch is local/solo or approved, then use lease and inclusion protection. | Disposable local-only branch with no remote. |
| "Rewrite this shared branch" | Stop and ask for explicit approval plus a recovery point. | The branch is confirmed local and unpublished. |
| "Resolve conflict by taking ours/theirs" | Preserve intent from both sides, then run checks. | A generated file regenerated after the source conflict is resolved. |
"The host approved gh once, so publish freely" |
Host permission covers access; publishing user-owned text still needs the user's approval of that text. | The user already approved that exact text and operation. |
"gh isn't installed, so GitHub is out of reach" |
Check for a GitHub MCP server or host tools and go through the host's permission flow. | The host exposes no GitHub surface. |
| "Just open the PR with a quick title" | Draft title and body, get approval, then create it. | The user already approved that exact title and body. |
Handoffs
commit: staging, splitting, and committing approved work.refactoring: separating structural and behavioral changes in code.release: version bumps, CHANGELOG entries, tags in the working tree.debugging: reproduce before bisecting.