Gentle AI — Branch & PR Skill

When to Use

Load this skill whenever you need to:

• Create a branch for a new fix or feature
• Open a pull request on Gentleman-Programming/gentle-ai
• Prepare changes for review

Critical Rules

1. Every PR MUST visibly link an approved base-repository issue — Closes/Fixes/Resolves #<N> closes it on merge; Refs #<N> is non-closing. Every accepted reference MUST have status:approved; malformed, cross-repository, or mixed closing/non-closing references for the same issue are rejected by CI.
2. Ordinary type:* categorization — CI rejects zero or multiple type labels. Route it through the canonical issue-creation workflow contract: a current direct human instruction binds the exact target/action, target-host capability is verified, and it uses one bounded mutation and target-host readback; otherwise wait without mutation.
3. Protected policy labels — Adding or removing status:approved or size:exception requires authenticated actor target-host viewerPermission MAINTAIN or ADMIN and a current direct human instruction binding the exact target/action. Here verified policy authority means that actor permission and exact direct instruction, not separate target-host proof of the instruction-giver's identity; do not mutate automatically. size:exception additionally requires documented over-budget rationale and a human-selected exception.
4. 400-line review budget — keep PRs within 400 changed lines (additions + deletions) or document the rationale required for a size:exception label.
5. REQUIRED checks must pass — establish requiredness from the target branch rulesets/branch protection and current run status; see Automated Checks below.
6. No Co-Authored-By trailers — never add AI attribution to commits.
7. No force-push to main/master — protected branch.