Merge PRs

Merge PRs

Merge multiple pull requests into a single integration branch with intelligent conflict resolution, risk scoring, security pre-flight, automated CI failure diagnosis, flaky test awareness, and bisection-based failure isolation.

When to Use

• You have 2+ open PRs that need to land together or in sequence
• PRs may have conflicts with each other or with the base branch
• CI keeps failing on PRs and you want automated diagnosis + fixes
• You want to validate that all PRs work together before merging to main

Prerequisites

• gh CLI installed and authenticated (gh auth status works)
• On a clean working tree (git status shows no uncommitted changes)
• All target PRs exist and are open

Arguments

Workflow

Copy this checklist and track progress:

Merge PRs Progress:
- [ ] Phase 0: Risk assessment & safety (scoring, tiers, security, dry-run)
- [ ] Phase 1: Discovery & analysis (metadata, CI status, conflicts, merge order)
- [ ] Phase 2: CI triage for RED PRs (log retrieval, flaky check, diagnosis, auto-fix)
- [ ] Phase 3: Integration merge (safety tag, sequential merge, conflict resolution, verify)
- [ ] Phase 4: Finalize (summary, changelog, merge strategy, execute)
- [ ] Phase 5: Cleanup (close PRs, delete branches, prune)

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Phase 0: Risk Assessment & Safety

Run this phase BEFORE any git operations. It gates whether the merge should proceed. See RISK_SCORING.md for detailed computation tables and commands.

1. Step 0.1 — PR risk scoring: Compute 0–100 risk score from diff size (25%), file count (15%), hotspot overlap (25%), test coverage ratio (20%), and PR staleness (15%). Classify as GREEN (0–30), YELLOW (31–60), RED (61–100). If RED and no --force, ask user.
2. Step 0.2 — PR classification: Auto-classify into merge tiers (always/​maybe/​iffy/​never). never-tier PRs excluded from batching.
3. Step 0.3 — Security pre-flight (skip if --no-security): Scan diffs for secrets and audit dependencies for CVEs. BLOCK on secrets, WARN on CVEs.
4. Step 0.4 — Pre-merge dry-run: Test mergeability with git merge-tree for actual conflict detection (no working tree changes).

If --dry-run was specified, STOP after Phase 0 and report the full analysis.

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Phase 1: Discovery & Analysis

Step 1.1 — Gather PR metadata

gh pr list --state open --json number,title,headRefName,baseRefName,additions,deletions,files,mergeable,labels,createdAt

If specific PR numbers were given as arguments, filter to only those. If no arguments, use ALL open PRs targeting the base branch.

Report a summary table:

PR  │ Branch                          │ Files │ +/​-        │ Risk │ Tier   │ Mergeable
────┼─────────────────────────────────┼───────┼────────────┼──────┼────────┼──────────
#64 │ codex/​run-codex-review-since-feb│ 3     │ +104/​-2    │  12  │ always │ ✓
#65 │ codex/​perform-automated-bug-scan│ 2     │ +6/​-16     │   8  │ always │ ✓
#66 │ codex/​assess-wizarddemo-flow    │ 4     │ +135/​-26   │  34  │ maybe  │ ✓
#63 │ codex/​run-tech-debt-check       │ 24    │ +1149/​-742 │  72  │ never  │ ✓

Step 1.2 — Check CI status for each PR

gh pr checks <PR_NUMBER> --json name,state,conclusion

Categorize: GREEN (passed), RED (failed), PENDING (running), NONE (no checks).

If any PR is RED and --no-fix is NOT set, proceed to Phase 2 (CI Triage) for that PR. If any PR is PENDING, wait up to 5 minutes (polling every 30s) then proceed.

Step 1.3 — Analyze pairwise conflicts

Use git merge-tree results from Phase 0. Build a conflict matrix showing no overlap, file overlap, or confirmed conflicts between PR pairs.

Step 1.4 — Determine optimal merge order

Ordering heuristic (apply in priority):

1. Dependency chain: If PR-B's branch was created from PR-A's branch, merge A first
2. Tier ordering: always → maybe → iffy. never-tier PRs offered separately
3. Conflict minimization: Merge PRs with fewest predicted conflicts first
4. Size ascending: Smaller PRs first
5. Test PRs first: PRs that only add tests go before implementation changes
6. Refactors last: Large refactoring PRs go last

Ask the user to confirm the merge order before proceeding.

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Phase 2: CI Triage (for RED PRs)

For each PR with failing CI checks:

Step 2.1 — Pull failure logs

Follow the 3-tier CI log retrieval chain in CI_DIAGNOSIS.md: Tier 1 (check-run annotations) -> Tier 2 (--log-failed) -> Tier 3 (full log tail). Prefer Tier 1 -- annotations give structured {file, line, message} triples for direct edit operations.

Step 2.2 — Check for flaky tests

Before diagnosing a test failure as a real regression, check flaky test indicators (see CI_DIAGNOSIS.md for flaky test management details):

1. Check local .claude/​flaky-tests.json registry
2. Check if failing test file was modified by ANY PR being merged
3. Retry once if suspected flaky: gh run rerun <RUN_ID> --failed
4. Never retry more than once — two consecutive failures = real failure

Step 2.3 — Diagnose the failure

Parse log output to identify the failure category (see CI_DIAGNOSIS.md for failure signatures and fix strategies):

Step 2.4 — Attempt auto-fix

If auto-fixable and --no-fix is NOT set:

1. Checkout the PR branch: gh pr checkout <PR_NUMBER>
2. Apply the fix based on category
3. Verify locally: .workstream/​verify.sh
4. If verify passes, commit and push the fix
5. If verify fails again, ask user: attempt another fix (max 2 retries), skip PR, or abort

If NOT auto-fixable, report to user and ask: "Skip this PR and continue, or abort?"

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Phase 3: Integration Merge

Step 3.1 — Create safety tag and integration branch

git checkout <base-branch>
git pull origin <base-branch>
git tag "pre-merge/​$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)" <base-branch>
git checkout -b integrate/<descriptive-name>

Step 3.2 — Merge PRs sequentially

For each PR in the planned merge order:

git fetch origin <pr-branch>
git merge origin/<pr-branch> --no-edit

If merge has conflicts, resolve intelligently:

After resolving, verify file is syntactically valid, mark resolved and commit.

Step 3.3 — Run local verification

After ALL PRs are merged:

.workstream/​verify.sh

If checks pass, proceed to Phase 4. If checks fail and --no-fix is NOT set:

1. Diagnose integration failures (duplicate identifiers, type conflicts, test failures from combined changes)
2. Fix and re-run verification
3. Max 3 fix-verify cycles. If still failing, proceed to bisection.

Step 3.4 — Bisection on persistent failure

If verification fails after 3 fix attempts, use binary bisection to isolate the culprit PR. See CI_DIAGNOSIS.md for the full bisection protocol.

For N PRs, this requires at most log2(N) verification runs. Once the culprit is identified, ask user: merge passing subset, attempt to fix, or abort.

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Phase 4: Finalize

See MERGE_STRATEGIES.md for detailed templates and commands.

1. Step 4.1 — Summary report: Present risk scores, merge results, CI fixes, integration fixes, and verification status.
2. Step 4.2 — Changelog preview: Generate categorized changelog from PR titles (feat/​fix/​refactor/​test/​docs).
3. Step 4.3 — Ask merge strategy: Offer 4 options: (1) squash to main, (2) merge commit to main, (3) new combined PR (recommended), (4) keep for review.
4. Step 4.4 — Execute: Run the chosen strategy. For Options 1/​2, ask before pushing.
5. Step 4.5 — Post-merge validation (Options 1/​2 only): Poll CI on merge commit (up to 15 min). If CI fails, auto-draft revert PR.

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Phase 5: Cleanup

See MERGE_STRATEGIES.md for detailed commands.

After integration succeeds, automatically prompt for cleanup:

• Close original PRs with "Included in #N" comment and delete their remote branches
• Delete integration branch (local + remote) and safety tag
• Switch to main, pull latest, prune stale references
• Delete local branches whose remotes are gone

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Error Handling

Fatal errors (abort immediately)

• gh auth status fails → "Please run gh auth login first"
• Base branch doesn't exist → "Branch <name> not found"
• No open PRs found → "No open PRs targeting <base>"

Recoverable errors

• Single PR fails to merge → Ask user: skip or abort
• CI fix fails after retries → Report and ask: skip PR or abort
• Integration verification fails → Bisect, then offer partial merge or abort
• Post-merge CI fails → Draft revert PR

Cleanup on abort

If aborting mid-process:

git merge --abort 2>/​dev/​null
git checkout <original-branch>
git branch -D integrate/<name> 2>/​dev/​null
git branch -D bisect-test 2>/​dev/​null

Report: "Integration aborted. Cleaned up integration branch. You're back on <original-branch>."

Safety tags are NEVER deleted automatically. Report their names so the user can clean up when ready.

Guardrails

• NEVER force-push to any branch during this process
• NEVER delete remote branches without explicit user confirmation (Phase 5 cleanup prompt counts)
• NEVER delete safety tags without explicit user confirmation (Phase 5 cleanup prompt counts)
• NEVER merge directly to main without user confirmation at Step 4.3
• NEVER auto-merge RED-tier PRs without --force or explicit confirmation
• NEVER suppress security findings — always report detected secrets/​CVEs
• Max 2 auto-fix attempts per PR (Phase 2), max 3 for integration (Phase 3)
• Max 1 flaky test retry per failing test — two failures = real failure
• Always preserve the original integration branch until user confirms success
• If conflict resolution is ambiguous, always ask the user rather than guessing
• Commit CI and integration fixes with clear messages — never silent fixes

REMINDER: These guardrails apply throughout all phases. Never force-push, never suppress security findings, and always ask for confirmation before destructive actions.