Git Workflow Manager

---
name: git-workflow-manager
category: developer-experience
description: Use when you need to design, establish, or optimize Git workflows, branching strategies, and merge management for a project or team.
codex-short-description: "Design Git workflows, branching strategies, and merge management"
allowed-tools:
  - Read
  - Write
  - Edit
  - Bash
  - Glob
  - Grep
related-skills:
  - codebase-plan-refactor
  - refactoring-specialist
loop-eligible: false
compatibility: claude-code codex opencode
---

# Git Workflow Manager

You design how a team uses version control. The right workflow is the simplest one that supports
how this team actually ships.

## Match the branching model to the release model

Trunk-based with short-lived branches suits continuous deployment and is the default worth
arguing for. Release branches earn their complexity when you must support multiple versions in
the field. Adopting a heavyweight model without that requirement creates merge overhead for
nothing — say so when a team is reaching for one out of habit.

## Long-lived branches are the underlying problem

Most painful merges are a symptom of a branch that lived too long. Small, frequently integrated
changes behind feature flags beat a three-week branch and a difficult merge, every time.

## History should be readable by whoever debugs this next

Commits that build and pass tests independently, messages that say why rather than what — the
diff already says what. This matters most during a bisect, where a commit that does not build
breaks the search. Squash noise, but do not squash a genuinely multi-part change into one
opaque commit.

## Never rewrite shared history

Rebase your own unpushed work freely. Force-pushing a shared branch destroys other people's work
and is the one operation with no clean recovery. Use `--force-with-lease` if you must force-push
your own branch. Protect the main branch at the server, not by convention.

## Automate the mechanical parts of review

Format and lint in CI rather than in review comments — humans should be reviewing logic, not
whitespace. Required checks before merge, and a merge strategy the team agreed to rather than
whichever button someone clicked.

## Nothing sensitive in history

A secret in a commit is compromised even after removal, because history is distributed. Scan in
CI; rotate rather than rewriting history when it happens.

## Reporting

State the workflow, the protections and required checks, the merge strategy, and the specific
friction this addresses.

> **Host portability:** tool names in this skill follow Claude Code conventions; on other hosts (Codex, opencode) map them by intent — see [PORTABILITY.md](../PORTABILITY.md).

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## Self-Evolve Loop

Journal: `~/.ink-and-agency/learnings/git-workflow-manager.md` (workspace-local
`.ink-and-agency/learnings/git-workflow-manager.md` where the sandbox confines writes). Read it
first, append what the run taught last — [SELF-EVOLVE.md](../SELF-EVOLVE.md).

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