Skill: git-advanced

What I do

I provide expertise in advanced Git operations to manage complex version control scenarios. I focus on history management, regression hunting, and clean collaboration workflows.

When to use me

• When cleaning up a complex feature branch before a pull request
• When hunting for a commit that introduced a bug using bisect
• When moving specific commits between branches using cherry-pick
• When recovering lost work using the reflog

Core principles

1. History preservation: Use rebase to keep a linear history, but avoid changing pushed public history.
2. Atomic search: Use bisect to find regression points quickly.
3. Safety first: Use the reflog as a safety net for any operation that modifies HEAD.
4. Fixup discipline: Use fixup commits to keep work-in-progress clean and easily squashable.

Patterns & examples

Interactive rebase: Use git rebase -i HEAD~n to squash, reword, or reorder the last n commits. This is standard before merging any feature branch.

Git bisect:

1. Start with git bisect start.
2. Mark the current (broken) commit: git bisect bad.
3. Mark a known good commit: git bisect good <hash>.
4. Git will then check out a commit in the middle for testing. Continue marking good or bad until the culprit is found.

Fixup workflow:

1. Make a small fix for a previous commit.
2. Commit with git commit --fixup=<hash>.
3. Later, use git rebase -i --autosquash <base> to automatically merge those fixes.

Selective backporting: Use git cherry-pick <hash> to apply a specific commit from another branch to your current one.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• ❌ Rewriting public history: Never rebase or squash commits that have already been pushed and shared with other developers.
• ❌ Force pushing blindly: Always use --force-with-lease when pushing rebased branches to ensure you don't overwrite others' work.
• ❌ Large rebases: Avoid rebasing branches with hundreds of commits. Rebase frequently to manage conflicts in small increments.

KB Reference

~/vaults/baphled/3. Resources/Knowledge Base/AI Development System/Skills/Git/Git Advanced.md

Related skills

• git-master: For standard Git workflows and search
• git-worktree: For managing multiple branches simultaneously
• ai-commit: For atomic commit discipline and attribution