Merging Prs

Merge a PR through the Trunk merge queue

Merges into main go exclusively through the Trunk merge queue. gh pr merge and the GitHub merge button are blocked by branch ruleset. To merge, you enqueue the PR with a comment, then watch it until Trunk lands it.

When a developer says "merge this PR", "merge it when it's ready", "land it", "ship it", or "babysit this PR", do the full loop below — enqueue and watch to completion, reporting the outcome.

<n> below is the PR number. Resolve the repo slug once if you need it: REPO=$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner).

1. Preflight

gh pr view <n> --json state,isDraft,mergeable,reviewDecision,statusCheckRollup

• Not open (already merged/closed) → report and stop.
• Draft → it can't be merged. Ask the developer to confirm, then gh pr ready <n> before continuing. Don't un-draft silently.
• Failing required checks (statusCheckRollup) → the queue will just reject it. Report which checks are red and stop; fix them first. Pending checks are fine — the queue waits for them.
• Not yet approved (reviewDecision empty or REVIEW_REQUIRED) → fine, enqueue anyway. See below.
• Merge conflicts (mergeable == "CONFLICTING") → report and stop; rebase first.

Enqueueing before approval is safe, and is the closest thing this repo has to auto-merge. A submitted PR sits in Trunk's Queued state until GitHub's branch protection on main is satisfied — one approving review, code-owner review, and the required checks (build, quality, unit-test, integration-test, typecheck) — and Trunk merges it once they land. Trunk is not a bypass actor on those rules, so it cannot merge an unapproved or red PR.

The catch: pushing new commits drops the PR from the queue. If review feedback is likely, either wait for approval before enqueueing, or re-enqueue with /trunk merge after each push.

2. Enqueue

gh pr comment <n> --body "/trunk merge"

Within ~2 minutes, confirm Trunk picked it up — a check run whose name starts with Trunk Merge Queue should appear on the head commit:

SHA=$(gh pr view <n> --json headRefOid -q .headRefOid)
gh api repos/$REPO/commits/$SHA/check-runs \
  --jq '.check_runs[] | select(.name | startswith("Trunk Merge Queue")) | {name, status, conclusion, details_url}'

If nothing appears after a couple of minutes, the developer may lack write access or GitHub-comment commands may be disabled — report that and suggest the trunk-merge-queue-submit label as a fallback.

3. Poll until it lands

Loop about every 60 seconds, up to ~45–60 minutes total. Each iteration:

gh pr view <n> --json state,mergedAt          # MERGED  -> success, stop
SHA=$(gh pr view <n> --json headRefOid -q .headRefOid)
gh api repos/$REPO/commits/$SHA/check-runs \
  --jq '.check_runs[] | select(.name | startswith("Trunk Merge Queue")) | {status, conclusion, details_url}'
sleep 60

• state == "MERGED" → done. Report success with the merge commit.
• Check run status moves queued → in_progress → completed. Report each transition so the developer can follow along.
• Watch the check run + PR state, not gh pr checks --watch: the queue runs CI on Trunk's own draft/trunk-merge/** branch, so this PR's own checks don't reflect the queue's testing.
• If it's parked in Queued waiting on a human review, say so once and slow the cadence to ~5 minutes. Keep watching — the merge still has to be reported.
• Stop at the timeout with a status summary rather than looping forever. If it was still waiting on review, say that's why and offer to keep watching.

4. Handle failure

If the check run completes with conclusion == "failure" (or the PR drops out of the queue), Trunk kicks the PR and its bot comments with the failing workflow. Read the newest comments and report the reason:

gh pr view <n> --comments | tail -n 40

• If the failure is clearly caused by this PR and the fix is obvious, fix it, push, wait for the PR's own checks to go green, and re-enqueue once with /trunk merge.
• Otherwise stop and report the failure and the workflow link. Don't repeatedly re-enqueue a red PR.

5. Cancel

If the developer asks to stop the merge:

gh pr comment <n> --body "/trunk cancel"

Confirm the check run reports cancelled.

Hard rules

• Never run gh pr merge — it's blocked and it's not how this repo merges.
• Never force-push a branch while it is in the queue — it removes the PR from the queue.
• Re-enqueue a failed PR at most once automatically; beyond that, hand back to the developer.