git-workflow_skill

Overview

This skill provides practical Git workflow guidance for commits, branches, and pull requests. It codifies conventional commit messages, branch naming, and PR templates to keep history clear and reviews efficient. Use it to standardize team practices and reduce review friction.

How this skill works

The skill inspects commit messages, branch names, and PR titles to ensure they follow a consistent format and recommended types (feat, fix, docs, etc.). It offers templates and examples for commit bodies, branch naming patterns, and a PR description checklist. It also recommends common commands for starting work, committing changes, updating branches, and creating pull requests.

When to use it

• When creating a new feature branch or bugfix branch
• When composing commit messages for clarity and traceability
• Before opening a pull request to ensure title and description match standards
• When rebasing or syncing a branch with main
• When writing tests or documentation that require specific commit types

Best practices

• Use the commit format type(scope): subject and include a body and footer when needed
• Name branches with type/ticket-short-description, e.g., feature/TICKET-123-description
• Keep commit subjects short (50 characters) and bodies wrapped at ~72 characters
• Stage changes interactively (git add -p) to create focused commits
• Rebase onto main before creating a pull request to keep history clean

Example use cases

• Create a new feature branch: git checkout -b feature/AUTH-123-oauth-login and follow the commit format
• Fix a bug with a clear commit: fix(api): handle null response from external service
• Prepare a pull request using the PR template: include Summary, Changes, Testing, and Checklist
• Update a branch: git fetch origin && git rebase origin/main to incorporate upstream changes
• Maintain repo hygiene: use chore/ branches for dependency updates and refactor/ for internal restructures