catchup_skill

Overview

This skill helps you quickly understand what changed on a feature branch and why those changes were made. It inspects branch metadata, summarizes commits, reviews changed files, and produces a focused narrative about features, fixes, refactors, and architectural shifts. The output is organized for fast onboarding or review handoff.

How this skill works

It determines the current branch and identifies the base branch (commonly main or master). It gathers commits since the branch point, enumerates added/modified/deleted files, and reads the affected files to infer intent: new features, bug fixes, refactors, and architecture changes. Finally, it produces a structured summary that highlights purpose, key files, notable patterns, and potential risks or follow-ups.

When to use it

• Before code review to get context on a branch quickly
• When picking up work from a colleague or returning to your own branch after time away
• Prior to merging to identify blockers or risky changes
• During release prep to understand feature scope and regressions
• When documenting a change log or writing release notes

Best practices

• Use a clean local history (rebase/squash) so commit summaries are meaningful
• Create descriptive commit messages to ease intent detection
• Keep changes focused per branch to reduce noise in file-level analysis
• Flag or annotate large architectural changes in PR descriptions for clarity
• Run tests and include test changes so impact is verifiable

Example use cases

• Summarize a feature branch to write a concise PR description
• Onboard a reviewer with a short narrative of why and how changes were made
• Identify risky files or areas needing additional tests before merge
• Extract bullet points for release notes from commits and modified files
• Detect unexpected deletions or refactors that may affect other modules