history-curation

name	history-curation
description	Safely curate agent-owned pyfixest commits before first PR submission, including layers managed by gh stack.

Curate commit history

Use this skill after code and checks stabilize, before the first remote PR submission. Read the branch and commit conventions in docs/developer/git-and-pr-style.md.

Authorization and preconditions

Before any rewrite, report:

• every branch and its exact immediate parent;
• whether each branch is agent-owned, pushed, or under review;
• the original tip SHA for every affected branch;
• dependent branches that will need rebasing; and
• the exact rewrite and stack-rebase commands.

Then ask the user explicitly whether that specific rewrite is approved. General permission to implement, commit, or open a PR does not authorize rewriting history. Proceed only when the user approves in the current conversation and:

• the worktree is clean;
• the branch is named, is not master, and its immediate parent is verified;
• the history is agent-owned;
• the original tip SHA is recorded.

Never rewrite contributor-owned history. Never silently rewrite after review starts.

Curate one layer

Inspect git log <parent>..HEAD. Keep a few concise commits that tell the review story: contracts/helpers/tests, implementation/wiring/tests, then exports/docs. Each commit must be self-contained, address one reviewer concern, and be small enough for a human to review independently. Pair tests with the behavior they establish and require every commit to pass its applicable targeted checks. Split a commit when a reviewer would need to understand an unrelated concern or an unnecessarily long diff at the same time.

Remove WIP, fixup, accidental, and formatting-only commits.

Use interactive rebase when practical. Otherwise, after recording the tip and verifying the layer base, use git reset --soft <verified-layer-base> and reconstruct one approved slice at a time. Confirm the final tree is identical to the recorded tip with git diff --exit-code <tip> HEAD, then inspect the resulting log and diff.

For a stack, curate bottom-up and rebase descendants with gh stack rebase --upstack. After remote submission, use gh stack push instead of raw force push and obtain maintainer approval before cleanup that would invalidate reviews.