command-center/agent/managed-skills/land-merged-pr-with-blocked-tree-ops/SKILL.md

name, description

name	description
land-merged-pr-with-blocked-tree-ops	Use when a merged PR must land in a checkout whose working tree is dirty and workspace policy blocks git switch/restore/stash/reset-to-commit: prove identity, commit forward, merge, verify.

Landing a merged PR into a checkout with blocked tree operations

Shared-workspace policy can block git switch, git checkout <branch>, git restore, git stash, and git reset <commit> ("uncommitted changes other concurrent agents rely on"). A git pull --ff-only then aborts with "Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge" — even when the local content is byte-identical to the incoming commit, because git compares the index, not intent. Observed twice on 2026-10-19 (dank/command-center, dank/dankvoice).

Procedure

1. Prove identity first — never assume it. git fetch && git diff --stat origin/main -- <the dirty paths> → empty output means the working tree already equals the merged result, so committing it forward destroys nothing. If it is not empty, stop: there is real local work; do not proceed.
2. Commit forward the identical paths (message says exactly that, e.g. "land merged #N content; policy blocks restore/stash, so the identical copies are committed rather than discarded"). Hooks still run.
3. Merge, don't ff: git merge --no-edit origin/main (ort resolves identical changes on both sides cleanly). --ff-only is impossible once step 2 created a commit.
4. Untracked-collision case: if the abort says "Please move or remove them before you merge", an untracked local file occupies a path the merge adds. mv it aside, merge, then cmp the restored file against the copy — identical → drop the copy (if the copy came from .AGENTTRASH, delete it and rmdir, since the file is now tracked).
5. Verify: repo lint/tests, git status --porcelain -- <paths> empty, and git rev-parse --short HEAD origin/main equal after a fresh git fetch.

Gotchas

• git merge … | tail -3 masks the exit status — tail always exits 0 and an && chain then continues past an aborted merge. Run the merge unmasked, or check ${PIPESTATUS[0]}.
• Immediately after a push, git rev-list --count main..origin/main can report phantom commits-behind from a stale remote-tracking snapshot. Re-fetch and compare rev-parse before believing any drift.
• Do not push redundant commits into a deployment checkout without checking the repo's tier law: machine/live tiers commit straight to main, human/agent prose goes by PR.

Never

No --no-verify, no reset --hard, no checkout -- <path>, no "temporary" stash: those are exactly the operations the policy blocks because they discard other agents' work.