dtsong/GitHub PR Merge

Scope Constraints

• Read-write operations — merges a PR into its base branch and optionally deletes the source branch.
• Does not create PRs, update PR branches, or respond to review comments.
• Does not modify repository settings or branch protection rules.
• Verifies merge readiness (CI, approvals, conflicts) before proceeding.

Input Sanitization

• PR numbers: must be positive integers.
• Merge strategy flags (--squash, --rebase, --merge): must be recognized option names only.
• Commit message text: reject null bytes.
• Repository identifier: inferred from local git context; if provided, must match owner/repo format with alphanumeric characters and hyphens only.

/gh-pr-merge - Merge Pull Request

Merge a pull request with configurable merge strategy.

Usage

/gh-pr-merge                  # Merge current branch's PR
/gh-pr-merge 123              # Merge PR #123
/gh-pr-merge --squash         # Squash and merge
/gh-pr-merge --rebase         # Rebase and merge
/gh-pr-merge --merge          # Create merge commit
/gh-pr-merge --delete-branch  # Delete branch after merge

Merge Strategies

| Strategy | Command | When to Use | |----------|---------|-------------| | Squash | --squash | Clean single commit, hide WIP history | | Rebase | --rebase | Linear history, preserve individual commits | | Merge | --merge | Preserve all history, show merge point |

Workflow

Step 1: Pre-Merge Checks

# Get PR details
PR_NUM=$(gh pr view --json number -q '.number' 2>/dev/null)

# Check merge readiness
gh pr view $PR_NUM --json mergeable,mergeStateStatus,statusCheckRollup,reviewDecision

Using GitHub MCP:

// Get PR status
const pr = await mcp__github__get_pull_request(owner, repo, pr_number);
const status = await mcp__github__get_pull_request_status(owner, repo, pr_number);

Step 2: Verify Requirements

Check that:

• All required checks passed
• Required approvals obtained
• No merge conflicts
• Branch is up to date (if required)

Step 3: Confirm and Merge

# Squash merge (recommended for feature branches)
gh pr merge $PR_NUM --squash --delete-branch

# Rebase merge
gh pr merge $PR_NUM --rebase --delete-branch

# Regular merge
gh pr merge $PR_NUM --merge

Using GitHub MCP:

mcp__github__merge_pull_request(owner, repo, pr_number, {
    merge_method: "squash",  // or "rebase" or "merge"
    commit_title: "feat: Add dark mode (#123)",
    commit_message: "Detailed description..."
})

Output Format

Pre-Merge Check

Checking PR #123: Add dark mode support

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Merge Requirements:

  ✓ CI checks passed (5/5)
  ✓ Approved by @reviewer1
  ✓ No merge conflicts
  ✓ Branch is up to date with main
  ✓ All conversations resolved

Status: READY TO MERGE

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Merge Strategy:

  [1] Squash and merge (Recommended)
      Combines 5 commits into 1 clean commit
      Best for: feature branches, clean history

  [2] Rebase and merge
      Applies 5 commits on top of main
      Best for: preserving commit granularity

  [3] Create merge commit
      Adds merge commit, preserves all history
      Best for: long-running branches, audit trail

Select strategy [1/2/3]:

Successful Merge

Merged PR #123: Add dark mode support

Strategy: Squash and merge
Commits squashed: 5 → 1

Final commit:
  abc1234 feat: Add dark mode support (#123)

Branch cleanup:
  ✓ Deleted remote branch: origin/feat/dark-mode
  ✓ Deleted local branch: feat/dark-mode

Linked issues:
  ✓ Closed #456 (referenced in PR)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Post-merge:
  Switched to branch: main
  Run /git-pull to get the merged changes locally

Congrats! 🎉

Cannot Merge

Cannot merge PR #123

Issues found:

  ✗ CI checks failing
      - ci/lint failed (2 errors)
      - ci/test failed (1 failure)

  ✗ Changes requested by @reviewer1
      - Unresolved comment on src/theme.tsx

  ✗ Merge conflicts with main
      - src/components/Header.tsx

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

To fix:

  1. Fix lint errors and failing test
     /git-push after fixes

  2. Address review comments
     /gh-pr-respond

  3. Resolve merge conflicts
     /gh-pr-update or /git-merge-main

Then run /gh-pr-merge again.

Squash Commit Message

When squash merging, craft a good commit message:

Suggested squash commit message:

Title:
  feat: Add dark mode support (#123)

Body:
  - Add theme toggle component in header
  - Support system preference detection
  - Persist theme choice in localStorage
  - Add dark color palette

  Closes #456

  Co-Authored-By: Claude <[email protected]>

[Edit Message] [Use as-is] [Cancel]

Auto-Delete Branch

After successful merge:

# Delete remote branch
git push origin --delete feat/dark-mode

# Delete local branch
git branch -d feat/dark-mode

# Update local main
git checkout main
git pull

Protected Branch Rules

If repository has branch protection:

Branch protection rules for 'main':

  ✓ Require pull request reviews (1 approval) - Met
  ✓ Require status checks - Met
  ✗ Require branches to be up to date - Branch is 2 commits behind

Update required before merge:
  /gh-pr-update

Integration

• Use /gh-pr-status to check readiness first
• Use /gh-pr-respond to address comments
• Use /gh-pr-update if branch is behind
• Use /git-delete-branch for manual cleanup