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branch-discipline

Branch Discipline — Always Return to Main After Feature Work

Section titled “Branch Discipline — Always Return to Main After Feature Work”

Rule

Section titled “Rule”

After finishing work on a feature/bug/refactor branch (committed, pushed, PR merged), you MUST:

  1. Switch back to the primary branch — main for normal repos; the worktree’s intended branch for worktrees.
  2. Pull the latest — git fetch && git pull --ff-only so your local matches origin.
  3. Delete the merged branch locally — git branch -D <branch> (use -D not -d because squash-merge produces a new SHA so git’s ancestry check sees the branch as “not merged”).
  4. Verify clean state — git status --short should be empty.
  5. Confirm in the report — explicitly state “back on main, working tree clean.”

Worktree exception: if the branch has a + prefix in git branch, it is in active use in a worktree — DO NOT delete it. Report as “in worktree, left untouched.”

Full worked example, multi-kit loop, and “when NOT to delete” cases: docs/branch-discipline.md.

Why

Section titled “Why”

Stale local branches cause the next git pull --ff-only to fail (local has commits main doesn’t), masking that work was already merged.