fork-dev-branch_skill

Overview

This skill creates a standardized development branch for a given GitHub issue using the format issue-<number>-<brief-title>. It verifies the issue exists and is open, converts the issue title into a concise hyphenated slug, and creates and checks out the new git branch. The result is a predictable branch name suitable for PRs and collaboration.

How this skill works

The agent extracts the issue number from the conversation or queries recent issues if missing, then runs gh issue view to confirm existence and state. It converts the issue title to a lowercase, hyphen-separated brief title (3–5 words max, no special characters), then runs git checkout -b issue-<number>-<brief-title>. The agent confirms branch creation or prompts the user if the issue is invalid or the converted title needs user approval.

When to use it

• You want a consistent branch naming scheme for all issue work.
• Preparing to implement or fix an open GitHub issue before opening a PR.
• Automating developer workflows in CI scripts or bot agents.
• Onboarding contributors to ensure branches follow repository conventions.
• When a brief, descriptive branch name helps traceability between issues and code changes.

Best practices

• Always verify the issue exists and is open before creating the branch.
• Limit the brief title to 3–5 words and use only lowercase letters and hyphens.
• Remove tag prefixes and special characters from the issue title during conversion.
• If the converted title is ambiguous or too long, ask the user for a preferred short title.
• Confirm branch creation output and push or set upstream explicitly if needed.

Example use cases

• User asks: “Create a dev branch for issue #42” → verify issue, suggest issue-42-add-typescript-support, create branch.
• Bot invoked in CI to spin up a feature branch from the most recent issue assigned to a user.
• Developer automation that lists recent issues, then creates branches for selected items following naming rules.
• Contributor workflow: transform verbose issue titles into concise branch names before opening PRs.