gentle-ai-chained-pr

Activation Contract

Load this skill when a planned PR may exceed 400 changed lines, an ODD feature's forecast or running authored changed-line count from work-unit commits exceeds about 400, or the user asks for chained/stacked PRs, review slices, or reviewer-load control. The per-task advisory 400 authored-line heuristic does not itself require a PR split.

Hard Rules

• Recommend slicing PRs over 400 changed lines; offer the ordered oversized-delivery menu below and follow the user's selection subject to the destination repository's documented contribution/size policy.
• size:exception is a Gentle-owned repository policy, not a universal label requirement. Never request, create, or add this label for generic users unless the destination policy uses it. Preserve that policy's maintainer acceptance gates and protected-label human authorization; selection alone grants neither.
• The budget constrains how work is sliced, never the code itself. Never delete comments, blank lines, docs, or tests, and never compress or restyle code, to fit under the budget.
• Slicing is bounded: make one honest slicing pass. If no cohesive split brings every slice within budget, stop iterating, keep the best cohesive split, and report the final line count and rationale. Recommend a size exception only when the destination policy provides that route.
• Keep each PR reviewable in about ≤60 minutes.
• In a chain, use one deliverable work unit per PR; keep tests/docs with the unit they verify. A selected single PR may contain multiple coherent work-unit commits.
• State start, end, prior dependencies, follow-up work, and out-of-scope items in every chained PR.
• Every child PR must include a dependency diagram marking the current PR with 📍.
• In Feature Branch Chain, create a draft/no-merge tracker PR; child PR #1 targets the tracker branch, later children target the immediate parent branch.
• Treat polluted diffs as base bugs: retarget or rebase until only the current work unit appears.
• Do not mix chain strategies after the user chooses one.
• Before creating branches or PRs, verify the target repository's default branch; use it as the integration base, not an assumed main. stacked-to-main is the historical strategy token even when the default branch has another name.