[GH-ISSUE #159] [Question]: Git stacked branches #63

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opened 2026-02-27 10:22:01 +03:00 by kerem · 0 comments

kerem commented

2026-02-27 10:22:01 +03:00

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Originally created by @roeeyn on GitHub (Feb 6, 2026).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/mikeyobrien/ralph-orchestrator/issues/159

Area

Quality gates / scoring

Question

What would be the best way to indicate ralph that I'd like to have stacked branches for each task?

For example, if I have three tasks (A, B, C), I'd love to have branches like:

task-a: from main
task-b: from task-a
task-c: from task-b

This way, it would be really easy to review big feature implementations, and just modify specifc changes to finally rebase the top branches.

What have you tried?

I tried to add these instructions in both the "PROMPT.md" and the guardrails in the Ralph YAML, but it doesn't stick very well. Sometimes it just leaves the changes unchecked in the branch, emits the completed event for the task, and the new agent gets really confused about it. I would expect that the new agent (loop) finds a clean branch, reads the pending task, and creates a new branch from the previous one to continue the work. If the branch is not clean, it would mean that the changes did not pass, or something went wrong.

Ralph version

2.4.4

Originally created by @roeeyn on GitHub (Feb 6, 2026). Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/mikeyobrien/ralph-orchestrator/issues/159 ### Area Quality gates / scoring ### Question What would be the best way to indicate ralph that I'd like to have stacked branches for each task? For example, if I have three tasks (A, B, C), I'd love to have branches like: - task-a: from main - task-b: from task-a - task-c: from task-b This way, it would be really easy to review big feature implementations, and just modify specifc changes to finally rebase the top branches. ### What have you tried? I tried to add these instructions in both the "PROMPT.md" and the guardrails in the Ralph YAML, but it doesn't stick very well. Sometimes it just leaves the changes unchecked in the branch, emits the completed event for the task, and the new agent gets really confused about it. I would expect that the new agent (loop) finds a clean branch, reads the pending task, and creates a new branch from the previous one to continue the work. If the branch is not clean, it would mean that the changes did not pass, or something went wrong. ### Ralph version 2.4.4