merged-checkout-salvage

name	merged-checkout-salvage
description	Recover intentional work from a dirty checkout whose branch is already merged
domain	workflow
confidence	high
source	team-discovery

When to use

Use this when a local checkout is still dirty after its branch or PR has already merged, especially if the worktree mixes real source changes with stale branch drift and generated build output.

Playbook

1. Treat main as authoritative and inspect the dirty checkout against main, not just against HEAD.
2. Separate intentional source/docs changes from generated bin/, obj/, and workspace noise.
3. If the diff includes regressions from stale branch drift, do not keep working on that branch.
4. Create a fresh branch from main and re-apply only the intentional changes there.
5. Validate the rescued seam with targeted builds/tests if the full legacy solution has unrelated dependency gaps.
6. Clean generated output before committing so the rescue PR only carries durable changes.

Why it works

A merged stale checkout is no longer a trustworthy integration surface. Rebuilding the intentional work on top of current main prevents accidental reversion of code, docs, SQL assets, and team-state that landed after the original branch diverged.