| name | autoresearch-finalize |
| description | Finalize an autoresearch session into clean, reviewable branches. Use when asked to "finalize autoresearch", "clean up experiments", or "prepare autoresearch for review". |
Finalize Autoresearch
Turn a noisy autoresearch branch into clean, independent branches — one per logical change, each starting from the merge-base.
Step 1 — Analyze and propose groups
- Read
autoresearch.jsonl. Filter to kept experiments only.
- Read
autoresearch.md for context.
- Expand all short commit hashes to full hashes:
git rev-parse <short_hash>
- Get the merge-base:
git merge-base HEAD main
- For each kept commit, get the diff stat.
- Group kept commits into logical changesets:
- Preserve application order. Group N comes before Group N+1.
- No two groups may touch the same file. Each branch is applied to merge-base independently — overlapping files would conflict. If two groups touch the same file, merge them into one group.
- Watch for cross-file dependencies. If group 1 adds an API in
api.js and group 2 calls it in parser.js, group 2's branch won't work in isolation. Flag dependencies.
- Keep each group small and focused. One idea, one theme per group.
Present the proposed grouping:
Proposed branches (each from merge-base, independent):
1. **<description>** (commits abc1234, def5678)
Files: file1.py, file2.py
Metric: 42.3 → 38.1 (-9.9%)
2. **<description>** (commits ghi9012)
Files: config.json
Metric: 38.1 → 31.7 (-16.8%)
Wait for approval before proceeding.
Step 2 — Create branches
For each approved group:
BASE=$(git merge-base HEAD main)
git checkout -b autoresearch/final/<group-name> $BASE
git cherry-pick <commit1> <commit2> ...
If cherry-pick conflicts, resolve by taking the experiment's version (the whole point is to preserve the improvement).
Step 3 — Verify each branch
For each branch:
- Run the skill command to verify it still works
- Check that the metric improvement holds
- If it doesn't, flag it — the improvement may have depended on another group's changes
Step 4 — Report
Finalized branches:
1. autoresearch/final/<name> — <metric improvement>, ready to merge
2. autoresearch/final/<name> — <metric improvement>, depends on branch 1
The user can now review and merge each branch independently (or together if there are dependencies).
