Goal

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by causify-ai/helpers in .claude/skills/git.merge_conflicts/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Given a repo with unresolved Git conflicts, understand why each conflict happened, resolve it, verify the result, and finalize the in-progress operation

Workflow

Identify the Operation In Progress

Determine whether the repo is in the middle of a merge, rebase, or cherry-pick, since finalizing the resolution differs by operation
```
> ls -a .git | grep -E "MERGE_HEAD|rebase-merge|rebase-apply|CHERRY_PICK_HEAD"
```
Note <SOURCE>, the branch/commit being merged, rebased, or cherry-picked in, and <TARGET>, the branch that already contains history (e.g., main during a merge, or the branch being rebased onto)

Find the Files with Conflicts

Find the files with conflicts running
```
> git diff --name-only --diff-filter=U
```

Understand the Context

Understand the context, e.g., by looking at the PR description, if present
```
> gh pr view
```
- If there is no open PR, gh pr view fails: skip it and rely on commit history instead
Look at the previous commits on <SOURCE> and <TARGET> that lead to the conflict, to understand the intent behind each side
```
> git log <TARGET>..<SOURCE>
> git log <SOURCE>..<TARGET>
```

Propose Fixes

For each file with conflicts:
- List every conflict hunk in the file (a file can have more than one <<<<<<< / ======= / >>>>>>> block)
- For each hunk (or set of similar hunks), explain why the conflict happened and propose what needs to be done

Example

1. tutorials/GitHub_Stats/Master_GitHub_analysis.py
   - Issue: Jupytext version conflict.
   - Resolution: Use <TARGET>, it's the newer version.

2. tutorials/GitHub_Stats/docker_jupyter.sh
   - Issue: <SOURCE> adds -e GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN to Docker env; <TARGET>
     removes it.
   - Resolution: Use <TARGET> (remove the line)

If unsure what to do, prefer the changes from <SOURCE> over <TARGET>
- <TARGET>'s history is already saved, while discarding <SOURCE>'s changes could lose them permanently

Ask User and Apply the Changes

Ask the user which resolution to apply for each ambiguous case
Edit each conflicted file to remove the conflict markers and apply the chosen resolution

Confirm no conflict markers remain in any resolved file

> grep -rn '^<<<<<<<\|^=======\|^>>>>>>>' <RESOLVED_FILES>

Stage each resolved file
```
> git add <FILE>
```

Finalize the Operation

You MUST ask for user permission before finalizing, per the repo rule of never committing without permission
Once approved, finalize based on the operation identified above:
- merge: git commit
- rebase: git rebase --continue
- cherry-pick: git cherry-pick --continue
Do not skip hooks (e.g., --no-verify) or force anything unless the user explicitly asks for it

Verification

Run the related unit tests to make sure everything is fine
Confirm there are no conflict markers <<<<<<< / ======= / >>>>>>>
Confirm the operation finished cleanly
```
> git status
```

Ask for Help If Unsure How to Do

If the task is not perfectly clear, you MUST not perform it, but ask for clarifications
- When the task is complex, create a plan.md with 5 bullet points explaining what the plan is