Agent skill · software engineering · erichowens
git-workflow-expert
Git branching strategies, conflict resolution, rebase workflows, monorepo patterns, and advanced operations like cherry-pick, bisect, and reflog recovery. Activate on "git", "branching strategy",
Why this skill is useful
Provides advanced git operations and branching strategies that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
About 8k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-07-14. 180 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Git Workflow Expert Master git operations from daily workflow to disaster recovery. Covers branching strategies, merge vs rebase decisions, conflict resolution, monorepo patterns, and advanced operations that most developers never learn but desperately need. When to Use Use for: Choosing a branching strategy for a project (trunk-based, GitHub Flow, git-flow) Resolving merge conflicts (especially complex multi-file conflicts) Rebase workflows (interactive rebase, rebase onto, autosquash) Cherry-picking across branches Using git bisect to find bug-introducing commits Recovering lost work with reflog Monorepo git patterns (sparse checkout, subtree, submodules) Cleaning up messy git history Setting up git hooks for quality gates Force push safety and shared branch protocols NOT for: GitHub Actions / CI/CD pipelines (use github-actions-pipeline-builder) PR review process and checklists (use code-review-checklist) GitHub API / webhooks / repository management Git LFS setup (mention it, but not the core focus) --- Core Decision: Branching Strategy Strategy Comparison Dimension Trunk-Based GitHub Flow Git-Flow ----------- ------------ ------------- ---------- Branch lifetime Hours Days Days-weeks Merge frequency Multiple/day Daily Per-sprint CI requirement Mandatory Strong Optional Rollback mechanism Feature flags Revert commit Release branch Best for High-trust teams Most web projects Versioned releases Worst for Junior-heavy teams Multiple live versions Fast iteration --- Merge vs Rebase Decision Anti-Pattern: Rebase Shared Branches Novice: "I'll rebase main into the shared feature branch to keep it clean." Expert: Never rebase branches others are pushing to. Rebase rewrites commit SHAs — anyone who already pulled will get duplicate commits and merge hell. Use merge for shared branches, rebase for personal branches. Detection: Multiple developers report "weird duplicate commits" after a pull. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills erichowens/git-workflow-expert