stacked-pr-management_skill

Overview

This skill manages stacked (dependent) pull request workflows to split large features into ordered, reviewable PRs. It provides creation, visualization, rebase, merge-order, and stack validation utilities to keep dependent changes organized and safe.

How this skill works

The skill tracks a chain of PR nodes where each PR's base is the previous branch in the stack. It exposes utilities to save/load the stack, add or remove PR nodes, visualize the stack as an ASCII tree, compute merge order, detect circular dependencies, and find all dependents of a given PR. Common operations include creating a PR chain, rebasing dependents when a base changes, and merging the stack bottom-up while updating dependent bases.

When to use it

• Splitting a large feature into multiple, reviewable increments
• Working on related changes that depend on one another
• Iterating on later PRs while earlier ones are still in review
• Keeping a clean, linear commit history across dependent changes
• Rebasing or updating downstream branches after a base PR merges

Best practices

• Keep each PR small and focused to simplify review and rebase
• Record stack context in each PR description (position and base PR link)
• Merge bottom-up: merge the lowest-numbered/base PR first
• Rebase dependents onto the new base promptly using --force-with-lease
• Validate stack order to detect cycles before merging

Example use cases

• Create a 3-PR chain: database → API → UI, each PR based on the previous branch
• Visualize current stack to present to reviewers or teammates
• When base PR #42 merges, rebase all dependent branches onto main
• Merge a stack in computed bottom-up order, waiting for CI per PR
• Remove or reorder a PR from the stack during active development