Git Github Workflow

Git & GitHub Professional Workflow

Stack-agnostic conventions for any software project. The goal: a commit history that reads like a changelog, branches that map one-to-one to units of work, a main branch that is always green and always deployable, and CI that catches regressions before review.

Core principles

• main is sacred. Always deployable, always green, never force-pushed.
• One commit = one logical change, revertible in isolation without breaking anything.
• One branch = one unit of work. Open small, review fast, merge, delete.
• Rewrite local history freely. Never rewrite history others have pulled.

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Before you start any work

git status                                              # working tree clean?
git branch --show-current                               # on the right branch?
git fetch origin && git log HEAD..origin/main --oneline # behind main?

If the tree is dirty: commit, stash, or discard before starting unrelated work. If the branch is behind main: rebase first (see "Keeping a branch in sync").

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Commits

Format — Conventional Commits

type(scope): description

[optional body]

[optional footer]

• type required, one of: feat, fix, chore, docs, test, refactor, style, perf, ci.
• scope optional. Include when the change is localized to a named area (auth, api, parser, deps). Omit when the scope adds no information.
• description is imperative mood, lowercase, no trailing period, max 72 characters. Imperative because the commit applies a change — write it as a command.

Type cheat sheet:

| Type | Use for | |------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | feat | New user-visible capability | | fix | Bug fix (user-visible behavior was wrong, now correct) | | refactor | Behavior-preserving code change | | perf | Behavior-preserving change that improves performance | | test | Adding or fixing tests, no production code change | | docs | Docs only (README, comments, ADRs) | | style | Formatting, whitespace — no code change | | chore | Tooling, config, deps, build scripts | | ci | CI configuration only |

Description — good vs. bad

✅ feat(auth): add refresh token rotation
✅ fix(parser): handle empty input without panicking
✅ refactor(api): extract pagination into shared helper
✅ chore(deps): bump lodash to 4.17.21

❌ Updated stuff                          # vague, past tense, capitalized
❌ feat: Added new feature.               # past tense, capitalized, period
❌ fix(auth): fixes the bug where users   # redundant "fixes", truncated
❌ misc                                   # tells you nothing
❌ WIP                                    # never commit WIP to a shared branch

Body

Add a body when the why is not obvious from the diff. Skip it when the description fully covers the change.

• Separate from the description with one blank line.
• Wrap at 72 columns.
• Explain what changed and why, not how.

fix(scheduler): avoid double-firing of retry jobs

The retry queue was being polled by both the worker pool and the
supervisor, causing jobs to execute twice under load. The supervisor
poll was vestigial — removing it and letting the workers own the
queue exclusively.

Closes #482

Footer

Use for:

• Breaking changes: start a line with BREAKING CHANGE: followed by the migration note. This is the only thing that promotes a commit to a major version bump.
• Issue references: Closes #123, Refs #456.
• Co-authors: Co-authored-by: Name .

feat(api): replace v1 endpoints with v2 schema

BREAKING CHANGE: /users now returns `id` as string instead of int.
Clients must update their type definitions.

Closes #311

Atomic commits

A commit is atomic when it answers yes to all three:

1. Does it represent exactly one logical change?
2. Could it be reverted alone without breaking the build?
3. Would a reviewer understand it without reading the surrounding commits?

Never mix: refactor with feature, fix with formatting, unrelated changes across modules just because you happened to touch them.

If you wrote "and" in a commit message, you probably have two commits.

Staging — never git add . blind

git status                # what changed?
git diff                  # actual content of the changes
git add -p                # stage by hunk, not by file
git diff --staged         # confirm exactly what will be committed

git add -p is the default. It forces a look at every hunk. This is how you avoid committing debug prints, stray console.log, or secrets.

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Branches

Naming

/

Types match commit types: feat/, fix/, chore/, hotfix/, docs/, refactor/. Description in kebab-case, 2–5 words.

✅ feat/oauth-google-login
✅ fix/null-pointer-in-checkout
✅ chore/upgrade-typescript-5
✅ hotfix/payment-webhook-retry

❌ my-branch
❌ johns-work
❌ feature/AddNewAuthFlowAndAlsoFixSomeBugs
❌ test

Branch from main

Always off main, not off another feature branch — unless that branch is a hard dependency and you're explicitly stacking PRs. Stacked branches multiply review complexity; avoid when you can.

Keep one branch = one unit of work

If mid-work you find an unrelated bug or want a tangential refactor, do not add it to the current branch. Stash, switch to main, branch off, open a separate PR. Future you will thank present you when bisecting.

Keeping a branch in sync with main

Rebase, don't merge. Linear history is readable history.

git fetch origin
git rebase origin/main
# resolve any conflicts, then:
git push --force-with-lease

Always --force-with-lease, never --force. The former refuses the push if someone else pushed to your branch; the latter overwrites their work.

If the branch is shared with other humans, coordinate before rebasing.

Never commit directly to main

Not even one-character typo fixes. Branch, PR, merge. The protection is the workflow, not the diff size.

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Pull Requests

When to open

Open when the PR is reviewable in under thirty minutes. Past that budget, split it:

• Refactor PR first (no behavior change), feature PR second on top.
• Extract a "prep" PR with renames, file moves, or pure additions.
• One user-facing change per PR, even if it spans files.

Title

Same format as a commit message: type(scope): description. This becomes the merged commit on main when you squash-merge.

Body

Use the template at assets/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md. Sections:

• What — one or two sentences. A reviewer should understand the PR from this alone in 30 seconds.
• Why — motivation. Link the issue, design doc, or bug.
• How to test — concrete steps. Command, input, expected output.
• Screenshots — for UI changes. Delete the section if N/A.
• Checklist — tests, docs, no unrelated changes, CI green.

Draft PRs

Open as draft when:

• You want early feedback on direction before going deep.
• The change depends on a not-yet-merged PR.
• CI needs to run on something you're not ready to ship.

Mark "Ready for review" only when the checklist is satisfied and CI is green.

Responding to review

• Reply to every comment. Either resolve it (push a fix, mark resolved) or push back with reasoning.
• Don't resolve a thread the reviewer opened — let them resolve once satisfied.
• Push fixes as separate commits during review (don't amend — it makes the diff impossible to re-review). Squash on merge.
• Request re-review explicitly via the GitHub UI.

Merge strategy

Default: squash and merge. One PR = one commit on main. The squash commit message is the PR title in conventional commit form.

Use rebase and merge only when every commit in the branch is independently meaningful and you want all of them on main (rare — usually only for clean refactor sequences).

Never use merge commits on main. They pollute the log and break linear history.

After merge: delete the branch. Always.

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Branch protection

Configure on main (and any long-lived branch):

• Require pull request before merging — no direct pushes.
• Require approvals — minimum 1 for solo projects, 2 for teams.
• Require status checks to pass — at minimum: lint, typecheck, test, build.
• Require branches up to date before merging.
• Require conversation resolution before merging.
• Block force pushes to main.
• Block deletions of main.
• Automatically delete head branches after merge.

If a check fails on a PR, never bypass to merge. Investigate, fix, re-run.

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Continuous Integration

CI is the automated reviewer that runs on every change. It catches regressions the human reviewer won't notice.

Principles

• Fast. CI on a PR should finish in under 10 minutes. Past that, developers context-switch and feedback loops break. Cache aggressively, parallelize jobs.
• Reliable. A red CI must mean a real failure. Flaky tests destroy trust — quarantine or fix them immediately, never re-run hoping for green.
• Deterministic. Same commit, same result. Pin tool versions, pin dependency versions in lockfiles, pin runner OS versions.
• Required. Every check that matters is a required check in branch protection. If it's not required, it doesn't exist.
• Isolated. CI runs in a clean environment every time. Never depend on state from a previous run.

The four job pillars

Every project should run these on every PR and every push to main:

| Job | Purpose | |-------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | lint | Style and static analysis (formatting, common bugs) | | typecheck | Static type checking (skip only if untyped language) | | test | Unit and integration tests | | build | Produce the production artifact |

Run lint and typecheck in parallel — they're independent. build depends on the rest passing.

When workflows run

• Pull requests — all four pillars, on every push to the PR branch.
• Push to main — all four pillars, plus deploy (if applicable).
• Tags matching v*.*.* — release workflow (build artifacts, create GitHub Release, publish).
• Manual dispatch — for ops tasks (re-run a deploy, regenerate docs).

Workflow file conventions

• One workflow per concern: ci.yml, release.yml, deploy.yml. Do not put everything in one mega-workflow.
• Files live in .github/workflows/.
• File names are lowercase kebab-case.
• The name: field at the top is what shows in the UI — make it human-readable.

Performance — non-negotiable

• Cache dependencies. Every package manager has a cache action. Use it.
• Concurrency control. Cancel in-progress runs for the same PR when a new push comes in. Don't cancel runs on main.
• Fail fast. In matrix jobs, set fail-fast: true for PRs (one failure cancels the rest) and false for main (you want full signal).
• Conditional jobs. Skip jobs that don't apply to the changed paths (e.g., skip frontend tests if only backend changed). Use paths: filters or dorny/paths-filter.

Secrets

• Never commit secrets. Use repository or organization secrets (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions).
• Reference as ${{ secrets.NAME }}.
• Never echo a secret to logs. GitHub masks known secrets, but only the literal value.
• For PRs from forks: secrets are not available by default. This is intentional. Use pull_request_target only with extreme care and never to run untrusted code.

Reusability

• Extract repeated steps into composite actions (.github/actions//action.yml).
• For workflows shared across repos, use reusable workflows (workflow_call).
• Pin third-party actions to a full commit SHA, not a tag — tags are mutable, SHAs are not.

# ✅ Pinned to immutable SHA, with version comment
- uses: actions/checkout@b4ffde65f46336ab88eb53be808477a3936bae11 # v4.1.1

# ❌ Mutable tag — attacker who hijacks the repo can swap your build
- uses: actions/checkout@v4

Bundled templates

Skeletons in assets/:

• assets/workflows/ci.yml — four-pillar CI workflow with cache, concurrency, and placeholders for toolchain commands.
• assets/workflows/release.yml — tag-driven release workflow that creates a GitHub Release with auto-generated notes.
• assets/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md — copy to .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md.
• assets/CODEOWNERS — copy to .github/CODEOWNERS and customize.

To bootstrap a new repo: copy from assets/, fill in the placeholders marked # , commit.

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Rewriting history

Rewrite local history freely. Never rewrite history that has been pushed to a shared branch.

A shared branch is any branch another human or machine may have pulled. main is always shared. Your feature branch is shared the moment a teammate pulls it for review. If you must rewrite shared history, communicate first.

git commit --amend

Fix the last commit only — typo in message, forgot a file, missed a debug print. Only if not yet pushed.

git add forgotten-file
git commit --amend --no-edit         # add file, keep message
git commit --amend                   # edit message

Interactive rebase

Use git rebase -i before opening a PR to clean up local history.

git rebase -i origin/main

Operations: reword (fix message), squash (combine, merge messages), fixup (combine, discard message), drop (remove), reorder by moving lines.

When in doubt, branch first as backup (git switch -c backup-branch).

git reset

• --soft HEAD~1 — undo last commit, keep changes staged.
• --mixed HEAD~1 — undo last commit, keep changes unstaged (default).
• --hard HEAD~1 — undo last commit, discard changes. Destructive — confirm what you're discarding first.

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Tags & releases

Semantic versioning

vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH

• MAJOR — incompatible changes. Bumped by any commit with BREAKING CHANGE: in the footer.
• MINOR — new functionality, backward-compatible. Bumped by feat:.
• PATCH — backward-compatible fixes. Bumped by fix:.

Other types (chore, docs, style, test, refactor, ci, perf) do not bump the version on their own.

Tagging

Tag every deploy to production. The tag is the source of truth for "what's running."

git tag -a v1.4.0 -m "Release v1.4.0"
git push origin v1.4.0

Annotated tags (-a), not lightweight. Annotated tags carry the tagger, date, and message — required by most release tooling.

Changelog

Generate from conventional commits. Group by feat (Added), fix (Fixed), perf (Performance), BREAKING CHANGE (Breaking). Skip chore, style, ci, test — internal noise.

GitHub's auto-generated release notes (used in assets/workflows/release.yml) handle this if your PR titles follow the convention.

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Anti-patterns — never do these

| Anti-pattern | Do this instead | |---------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | git add . without looking | git add -p, then git diff --staged | | Commit message "fix stuff" / "updates" / "wip" | Conventional commit with imperative description | | One commit with refactor + feature + formatting | Three commi

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Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: ivogabriel19
• Source: ivogabriel19/git-github-workflow-skill
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.