PR Backlog Cleaner

Overview

Clean and normalize large backlogs of GitHub pull requests systematically while keeping the default branch stable and deployable. This skill provides a comprehensive workflow for triaging, reviewing, rebasing, testing, and dispositioning PRs at scale, ensuring every PR ends in one of three states: merged safely, closed with reason, or explicitly deferred.

NEW: Integrates pr-comment-analysis subskill to systematically extract, analyze, and prioritize existing PR review feedback. This helps avoid re-litigating issues reviewers already identified, catch hidden impacts through automated analysis, and make informed merge/close/defer decisions based on the complete feedback picture.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Facing a repository with numerous stale, outdated, or conflicted PRs
• Need to systematically clean up technical debt in pull request backlogs
• Want to safely merge or close PRs without destabilizing the default branch
• Managing a repository where PRs have accumulated without clear disposition
• Need to establish clear PR hygiene and backlog management practices
• PRs have existing review feedback that needs to be systematically analyzed and addressed (uses pr-comment-analysis subskill)

Global Safety Constraints