Finishing a development branch

Skill Yco-0314/strata/skills/l4-review/finishing-a-development-branch

Strata — a self-measuring skills framework for Claude Code & Codex: best-of-breed engineering skills stacked by altitude, where every skill has to prove it moves a measured number.

Install

npx -y skills add Yco-0314/strata --skill finishing-a-development-branch

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Use when implementation is complete and you need to integrate the work — presents the four structured hand-off options (merge locally / open PR / keep / discard), gates every merge-or-PR claim behind verification-before-completion, and tears down the worktree created by using-git-worktrees. The integration step called by subagent-driven-development and review at the end of work.

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SKILL.md

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Finishing a development branch — L4 integration primitive

The hand-off at the end of work: prove the branch is clean, let the user pick how to integrate it, execute that choice, and remove the worktree. Announce: "Finishing the development branch." This is a model-invoked primitive so the user-invoked SDD orchestrator can reach it (a user-invoked skill cannot call another user-invoked skill).

Step 1 — Verify clean state (the gate)

Do not present options on unverified work. Route the completion claim through verification-before-completion (L4): run the project's test command and read the actual output. Evidence before assertions.

Tests fail → stop here. Report the failures and the count; do not offer merge/PR/discard. You cannot integrate broken work, and you can't tell new failures from pre-existing ones.

Tests pass with output you've seen → continue.

Step 2 — Determine the base branch

git merge-base HEAD main 2>/dev/null || git merge-base HEAD master 2>/dev/null

No match → ask which branch this split from. Don't guess.

Step 3 — Present exactly four options

Implementation complete and verified. What would you like to do?

1. Merge back to <base> locally
2. Push and open a Pull Request
3. Keep the branch as-is (handle it later)
4. Discard this work

No commentary — keep the menu terse. Open-ended "what next?" is the failure mode.

Step 4 — Execute the choice

1 · Merge locally — git checkout <base> && git pull && git merge <branch>, then re-verify tests on the merged result (the merge can break what passed in isolation), then git branch -d <branch>. → teardown.

2 · Open PR — git push -u origin <branch> then gh pr create with a Summary (2–3 bullets) and Test Plan. The PR body must reflect verified state only — never claim "tests pass" in a PR you haven't run verification-before-completion against. → keep worktree.

3 · Keep as-is — report the branch name and worktree path. Touch nothing.

4 · Discard — list what dies (branch, commits, worktree path) and require the user to type discard. On exact confirmation: git checkout <base> && git branch -D <branch>. → teardown.

Step 5 — Worktree teardown

This removes the worktree using-git-worktrees (L3) created — it owns setup, this skill owns cleanup. Only for options 1 and 4:

git worktree list | grep "$(git branch --show-current)"   # in a worktree?
git worktree remove <worktree-path>

Options 2 and 3 keep the worktree (the PR may need follow-ups; "keep" means keep).

Option	Merge	Push	Delete branch	Keep worktree
1 Merge	✓	–	✓	–
2 PR	–	✓	–	✓
3 Keep	–	–	–	✓
4 Discard	–	–	✓ force	–

Red flags

Never present options on unverified or failing work. Never claim a merge/PR is clean without routing through verification-before-completion. Never re-skip the post-merge test run on option 1. Never delete work without a typed discard. Never force-push or auto-clean the worktree on options 2 or 3.

Flow

Called by subagent-driven-development (L3) and review (L4) once all tasks pass. Gates on verification-before-completion (L4). Pairs with using-git-worktrees (L3) — that skill sets up the worktree, this one tears it down.