Branch And Worktree Workflow Agent Skill

Branch and worktree workflow

Starting

Work that will take more than one sitting, or that runs alongside other work, gets its own isolated

workspace. A worktree gives you a second checkout of the same repository on a different branch — two

efforts, two directories, one object store, no stashing.

Branch from the current upstream default, not from whatever is checked out. Branching off a stale

local branch is how unrelated commits end up in a review.

While working

• Commit at points where the tree is coherent, not at the end of the day.
• Keep the branch current with its base often. A merge conflict found on day one is a five-minute

fix; the same conflict found on day ten is an afternoon.

• One concern per branch. If you find an unrelated bug, note it and leave it.

Finishing

Before proposing the work:

• Rerun the full check the project actually gates on, not the subset you have been running.
• Read your own diff top to bottom. Remove debug output, stray files, and commented-out code.
• Confirm the branch merges cleanly into its base.

Then decide how it integrates:

• Small and coherent — merge as is.
• Several separable concerns — split into stacked branches so each can be reviewed on its

merits. A reviewer given three concerns in one diff reviews none of them well.

• Exploratory — keep the useful commits, drop the rest.

Never

• Rewrite history on a branch someone else has checked out. Merge instead; a force-push breaks their

working copy.

• Leave a worktree behind after merging — stale worktrees hold references and confuse later work.
• Merge your own change without the checks green on the final commit, not an earlier one.