Git Workflows

Git Workflows

Use this skill for repository-state operations beyond constructing a new commit. Preserve unrelated work, inspect local policy before acting, and make the exact side effect explicit before running a mutating command.

Use git-commit to group, stage, validate, and describe new commits. Load security-review and security-review-evidence when secrets, credentialed remotes, signing trust, untrusted hooks or configuration, or other security boundaries are involved. Use dependency-supply-chain-review for submodule, downloaded hook tooling, vendored-source, or provenance questions.

Core Rules

• Follow repository instructions, contributing docs, branch protections, hooks, signing rules, and established integration policy over generic advice.
• Distinguish HEAD, the index, the working tree, local refs, remote-tracking refs, and remote refs. Do not describe reset, restore, and checkout as interchangeable.
• Distinguish uncommitted work, local-only commits, shared commits, and published refs before rewriting or discarding anything.
• Never infer authorization to push, force-push, delete refs, rewrite history, or discard files from a request to commit, update, merge, or fix code.
• Preserve unrelated user changes. Do not hide them with an unrequested stash, temporary commit, branch switch, worktree removal, or cleanup command.
• Prefer reversible operations, but do not promise recovery. Reflogs are local, expire, and do not restore arbitrary untracked files removed from disk.
• Treat command output and remote URLs as potentially sensitive. Report sanitized refs and outcomes instead of credentials or private host details.

Workflow

1. Inspect policy and repository state.

   • Read relevant repository instructions and contributing or release docs.
   • Check git --version before relying on version-sensitive commands.
   • Inspect status, current branch or detached HEAD, staged and unstaged changes, recent history, upstream configuration, and relevant worktrees.
   • Inspect remotes only when needed and do not print credential-bearing URLs.
   • In unfamiliar repositories, inspect effective hook and configuration sources before an operation that can execute hooks.

2. Define the intended outcome.

   • Separate branch or path switching from content restoration.
   • Separate downloading remote state from integrating it: fetch updates remote-tracking information; pull fetches and then integrates.
   • Choose whether history should preserve topology, replay commits, produce a squashed result, create an inverse commit, or move a ref.
   • For diagnosis, decide whether the task needs history inspection, line provenance, or a reproducible good/bad search before choosing log, blame, or bisect. Do not use blame to assign personal fault.
   • Determine whether affected commits or refs are already shared or published.

3. Protect current work.

   • Start from a clean state when the chosen operation requires it.
   • If work is present, stop and decide whether it belongs in a commit or an explicitly authorized stash. A separate worktree can isolate a different branch task, but it does not transfer staged, unstaged, or untracked changes from the current tree. Do not choose silently.
   • Check untracked and ignored files before restore, reset, clean, checkout, worktree removal, or submodule recursion. Reflog cannot recover all of them.
   • Check for submodules before adding, moving, or removing worktrees. Git's multiple-worktree support for submodules is incomplete; do not create multiple superproject checkouts when submodules are present.
   • When leaving detached HEAD, preserve wanted commits with an intentional branch or tag first.

4. Choose the narrowest operation.

   • Prefer switch for branch changes and restore for path or index content on Git 2.23 or newer. Retain checkout awareness for older repositories and ambiguous branch/path syntax; use -- to disambiguate paths.
   • Follow repository policy when selecting merge, rebase, squash, or fast-forward-only integration. Do not impose a universal pull strategy.
   • Prefer revert for undoing published changes. Use reset or rebasing only when moving or rewriting refs is the intended and authorized result.
   • Use cherry-pick for selected commits, not as a default substitute for a repository's normal integration workflow.
   • Treat tags as published release identifiers when repository policy does. Do not silently replace a published tag.
   • Use bisect only with a reproducible test or observation, mark untestable commits as skipped, record the first bad commit as evidence rather than the root cause, and reset the bisect session when finished.

5. Confirm risky side effects.

   • Require explicit authorization for worktree or index discard, destructive cleanup, history rewriting, branch or tag deletion, remote updates, and forced ref changes.
   • Preview the target ref, source commit, affected paths, and remote state before acting. Use dry-run behavior where the command supports it.
   • Never use plain --force as routine guidance. --force-with-lease is a guard, not coordination; forms that rely on remote-tracking refs can be undermined by background fetches. Prefer an explicit expected object ID for a separately authorized critical rewrite.
   • Do not bypass hooks with --no-verify merely to make an operation succeed.

6. Handle stopped operations deliberately.

   • Identify whether merge, rebase, cherry-pick, or revert owns the current conflict state before choosing continue, abort, skip, or quit.
   • Resolve content and semantic conflicts, then run focused validation for the integrated result. Compilation alone may not detect an incorrect merge.
   • Do not use reset --hard as generic conflict cleanup. An abort may also be unable to reconstruct pre-existing uncommitted work.

7. Verify and report.

   • Recheck status, diffs, recent history, branch/upstream state, tags, and worktrees relevant to the operation.
   • For remote changes, verify the intended remote ref instead of assuming a successful local command proves the server state.
   • Report the operation, affected refs or paths, validation, and remaining risks. Never expose secrets, credentialed URLs, private keys, or sensitive hook output.

Worktree Decision And Lifecycle

• Use a linked worktree when genuine concurrent branch work or a separate clean checkout must proceed without disturbing a worktree that remains in use. Prefer the current worktree for ordinary edits on the current task and branch.
• Existing dirty work remains in its original worktree. Transfer it only through a separate, explicitly chosen commit, patch, or authorized stash workflow.
• Before adding a worktree, inspect git worktree list, relevant worktree statuses, submodules, the target path, the intended commit or branch, and whether that branch is already checked out. A branch is normally checked out in only one worktree.
• Specify branch intent. Without a commit-ish or explicit -b, -B, or --detach, git worktree add <path> may create a branch named after the final path component. Disclose the new directory, branch or detached state, and linked-worktree metadata before creation.
• Worktrees share repository objects and refs while keeping separate working files, HEAD, and indexes. A ref update in one worktree can affect what the others observe even though their uncommitted files remain separate.
• Remove a clean linked worktree with git worktree remove; do not delete its directory as the normal cleanup path. Forced removal of an unclean, locked, or submodule-bearing worktree can discard work and requires explicit authorization.
• Use lock for a worktree on storage that may be temporarily unavailable, prune for stale administrative records after a worktree is already missing, and repair for inconsistent metadata such as a manually moved worktree. Do not use them as interchangeable cleanup commands.

Security and Supply-Chain Escalation

• If a secret may be staged, committed, reflog-reachable, or pushed, stop. Do not print it. Determine the exposure class, rotate or revoke first, and coordinate any history rewrite or remote cleanup through the security skills.
• Treat hooks and core.hooksPath as executable configuration. Do not trust or run unfamiliar hooks, hook managers, or downloaded helpers without review.
• Never solve repository ownership warnings by setting safe.directory=*. Scope any trust exception to a repository that policy intentionally trusts.
• Treat changed .gitmodules, submodule URLs, gitlinks, and pinned submodule commits as dependency provenance. Sanitize credential-bearing URLs.
• Follow established signing policy. Do not change key, trust, or signature configuration merely to complete a Git operation.

Detailed Operation Guidance

Load references/operation-matrix.md when the task needs command-specific selection, abort/recovery behavior, or upstream documentation links. Keep the core workflow above active for every operation.

Do Not Use For

• Grouping a working tree into commits or writing commit messages; use git-commit.
• Reviewing code, deciding whether a pull request should merge, or deciding whether a release should ship.
• GitHub issue, pull-request, review, or repository-administration APIs.
• Editor workspaces or generic orchestration across unrelated repositories.
• Checked-in CI or automated release publication where Git is only one pipeline step; use ci-release-engineering.
• Docker/OCI or Compose configuration; use container-engineering. Other deployment systems require their applicable platform or repository-specific guidance.

Handoff Checklist

• Repository policy and Git version checked.
• Current work, detached state, upstreams, remotes, and publication state scoped.
• Exact side effect and authorization confirmed.
• Unrelated changes and sensitive output preserved.
• Conflict, abort, and recovery path understood before mutation.
• Resulting refs, status, diffs, and relevant validation verified.
• Commands, outcomes, limitations, and residual risk reported safely.