| name | rebase |
| description | Resolve an in-progress paused rebase conflict, stage fixes, and drive git rebase --continue to completion; invoked by the conductor's finish-time rebase step or by an operator running /rebase. |
| enforcement | advisory |
| phase | ship |
| standalone | true |
| requires | [] |
Purpose
Resumes a paused rebase that stopped on a conflict hunk. The conductor's
finish-time runRebaseStep calls this skill when git rebase exits mid-flight
(exit code 1 with conflict markers in the working tree). The operator can also
invoke it manually as /rebase.
This skill has ONE job: resolve the conflict markers in the affected files,
stage the fixes, and run git rebase --continue to advance — repeating for any
additional conflict hunks — until the rebase completes cleanly or a hunk is
judged unsafe to resolve automatically.
The conductor retries this skill up to a configured cap (default 3) before
issuing a HALT. Each invocation is one bounded attempt.
Practices
1. Confirm Rebase State
Verify a rebase is actually in progress before touching anything:
git status
ls .git/rebase-merge/ 2>/dev/null || ls .git/rebase-apply/ 2>/dev/null
If no rebase is in progress, emit {"resolved": false, "reason": "no rebase in progress"} and stop.
2. Identify Conflicted Files
git diff --name-only --diff-filter=U
List every file with conflict markers (<<<<<<<, =======, >>>>>>>). Read
each file fully before touching it — you need to understand both sides
(ours = the branch being rebased onto, theirs = the commit being applied).
3. Resolve Each Conflict
For each conflicted file:
- Read the conflict hunk carefully. Understand what
HEAD (ours) and the
incoming commit (theirs) each intended.
- Apply the correct merged content — typically the union of both changes when
they touch different code, or the incoming change when ours is already
superseded. Use judgment; do not blindly accept either side.
- Remove all conflict markers. The file must parse/compile cleanly.
- If the conflict is in a generated file (lock files, compiled artifacts):
prefer
theirs unless the project has a clear policy.
If you cannot determine the correct resolution with confidence — conflicting
business logic, missing context, overlapping semantic changes — do not guess.
Emit {"resolved": false, "reason": "<specific description of what makes this unsafe>"} immediately. A wrong guess is worse than a HALT.
4. Stage and Continue
After resolving all conflicted files in this round:
git add <resolved-files>
git rebase --continue
git rebase --continue may open an editor for the commit message or encounter
another conflict hunk. If another conflict hunk appears, return to step 2 and
resolve it (still within this single invocation). Continue until the rebase
completes or an unsafe hunk is reached.
5. Safety Rules (Non-Negotiable)
- NEVER run
git rebase --abort — this drops the in-progress commit work.
The conductor's engine guards (FR-8 not-current / FR-9 dropped-commit) will
reject it, but do not attempt it in the first place.
- NEVER run
git rebase --skip — this discards the conflicting commit
entirely, causing data loss. The engine guards reject this too; do not attempt it.
- NEVER run
git push --force or any destructive branch operation during
rebase resolution.
- NEVER invoke this skill mid-build — only the conductor's finish-time rebase
step or an operator
/rebase invocation is sanctioned. Implementation agents
running during BUILD must not call this skill; doing so violates the
harness "no ad-hoc rebase mid-build" rule.
6. Result Contract
The conductor's DefaultStepRunner parses the last JSON object emitted to
stdout. This contract is load-bearing — the conductor decides whether to
retry or HALT based on it.
Print exactly one of these as the final line of output, on its own line:
{"resolved": true}
when the rebase completed fully (all commits applied, git status shows a
clean working tree on the rebased branch).
{"resolved": false, "reason": "<human-readable explanation>"}
when any conflict hunk was judged unsafe to resolve, the rebase is still
in progress, and a human must intervene. Be specific in reason — name the
files and what made the conflict ambiguous.
No other output format is accepted. Do not emit JSON anywhere else in your
output; the runner takes the last JSON line.
Verification
