Pre-Merge

Create a GitHub PR linking back to the PRD and slice issues, then review the full diff against the project's architectural principles. Produces advisory findings — does not block merge, auto-fix code, or file issues.

Invocation Position

This is a primary pipeline skill used after implementation has been verified and before merging to main, or when picking up someone else's PR for review.

Use /pre-merge when the branch is ready for PR creation, architectural review, and final plan-to-code reconciliation. Use /pre-merge --pr <number> when you are reviewing a PR you did not author.

Do not use it as a substitute for implementation verification, QA intake, or refactor planning. It assumes the work is already built and ready to review.

Modes

/pre-merge runs in one of three modes. All three reuse the architectural review dimensions defined in review-checklist.md; they differ in what they consume and what they produce.

• Author-mode (default) — invoked on your own branch with no --pr argument. The skill creates the PR (Phase 2) and prints findings to the terminal as advisories (Phase 4), then hands back there — it makes no fix commits of its own and opens no second pass. This is the mode auto-invoked by /execute Step 6 on the HITL path. What it reads is decided by branch state, not by a flag: a first review reads the whole slice, which is the whole branch unless the slice's work item records where it started; a re-run against a PR that already carries a review-currency stamp, whose head has since moved, takes the post-stamp delta — the commits after the stamped SHA — as the review's subject, and does not re-read what the earlier review covered. Phase 1 step 4 makes that decision and prints it. The delta is the subject, not the limit of what a reviewer may read: review-checklist.md settles what a reviewer reads, and that includes the tree around the delta.
• Reviewer-mode — invoked as /pre-merge --pr <number> against a PR you did not author. The skill skips PR creation (the PR already exists) and produces draft comment text (Phase 4) for you to review and post, structured per references/comment-craft.md (5P gate, Triple-R, Comment Signals, MMG Exchange).
• Loop-mode — invoked as /pre-merge --loop, or entered automatically when /execute hands off on an AFK run. Runs Phases 1–4 as author-mode does, except Phase 1 step 4's scope decision: loop-mode always reads the whole branch and never takes the post-stamp delta, then continues into Phase 5: it records every finding in a durable ledger — in the PR body, or on the work item, where references/state-backend.md § Where the review's records live says — attaches the evidence that supports or refutes each one, and hands back to the operator. Findings stop being terminal output in this mode; they become durable rows with owners. Loop-mode does not fix anything and makes no commits — the operator decides what happens to each finding (see Phase 5 § Why the loop does not fix).