--- name: cw-land description: "Use when turning verified Codewhale work into commits, branches, or a merge: choosing direct-main vs. worktree vs. integration branch, preserving contributor credit, and honoring the gate artifact before merging." --- # cw-land Verified work still has to land without stepping on other writers, losing contributor credit, or merging past a gate that has not actually passed. This stage is about the boundary between "it works" and "it is in `main`" — and about which of those steps you are allowed to take. Stage 5 of the loop: [cw-orient](../cw-orient/SKILL.md) → [cw-slice](../cw-slice/SKILL.md) → [cw-gates](../cw-gates/SKILL.md) → [cw-dogfood](../cw-dogfood/SKILL.md) → **land** → [cw-handoff](../cw-handoff/SKILL.md). ## When to use - The change is verified and needs to become a commit on `main`. - You are landing someone else's PR, harvesting a contributor's work, or resolving a conflict caused by `main` moving. - You are about to merge something behind a required gate. ## Workflow 1. **Choose the landing shape.** - **The checkout that already exists** is the default. Direct to `main` is permitted for a small coherent change when that checkout is current and owns the affected files; when several agents share it, partition by file, stage only your paths, and retry a commit that fails on `index.lock`. Local commit permission never implies push, merge, tag, release, or deploy permission. - **No maintainer PR branches** (`AGENTS.md`): verified slices land on `main` directly and hosted CI runs there. PRs are for contributors. - **A worktree** is for a lane that genuinely conflicts with the dirt you found in [cw-orient](../cw-orient/SKILL.md), or an experiment you may throw away — not for parallel agents on the same lane. - **An integration branch** (`integration/--`) is for resolving a contributor PR that conflicts with a moving `main` when you cannot push to their fork. It leaves their branch untouched. 2. **Commit narrow and build-green.** One coherent change per commit; the tree builds at every commit. Put the real verification in the message — actual pass/fail counts, not "tests pass". 3. **Preserve credit mechanically, not just politely.** Commit authorship and `Co-authored-by:` trailers must use the contributor's own GitHub-linked address — GitHub reads neither `.github/AUTHOR_MAP` nor `.mailmap` for the contribution graph; those are project conventions on top. When a contributor's work lands as our commit, it carries both: ```text Harvested from PR #N by @handle Co-authored-by: Name ``` That trailer is what lets `auto-close-harvested.yml` close their PR with credit. Canonical human identities live in `.github/AUTHOR_MAP`. Whether a bot or agent also appears in a trailer no longer matters — the CI check that policed trailer identities was removed because it rejected ordinary agent commits. Give humans their credit; don't spend time scrubbing tool trailers. 4. **Landing someone else's work: their time is more expensive than ours.** - Never make a contributor rebase around our churn. If their PR conflicts only because `main` moved, a maintainer resolves it. - Read their diff against the **merge base** first, so you know exactly what they added, then re-apply that — rather than hand-merging two large sides and hoping: ```bash git diff $(git merge-base main ).. ``` - **Conflicts that split mid-function do not resolve by keeping both sides.** Git's markers can land inside a body, so a both-sides resolution produces unbalanced braces that look plausible and do not compile. Default: take one side whole, then re-insert the other side's additions at their original anchor; when the conflict doesn't fit that pattern, resolve it however is correct and let the compiler judge. - `maintainerCanModify` does not guarantee push access to the fork. When the push is refused, land the resolved merge on an integration branch here. - **Check the contribution gate before assuming a PR is stalled.** An unlisted author's workflow runs sit at `action_required` and never start, so the PR looks abandoned when nobody has actually looked at it. Approve the runs, then fix the cause: add them to `.github/APPROVED_CONTRIBUTORS` (`all:username`), or comment `/lgtm` (PR scope) or `/lgtmi` (issue scope). 5. **Verify mergeability against the real head.** A PR that is clean against `main` can still conflict with a release branch: ```bash git merge-tree $(git merge-base ) ``` 6. **Merging under a gate.** `AGENTS.md` ("Merging under a gate") owns this: the artifact must literally say PASS, the review thread outranks the check rollup, and ambiguity blocks the merge — never the reverse. 7. **Clean up your own lane.** When a worktree you created lands on `main`, remove it (`git worktree remove `) and delete its merged branch. Leave other writers' worktrees alone; `git worktree list` shows them. Worktree sprawl was a 560 GB problem here once. ## Red flags / don't - Don't push, merge, tag, create a release, or deploy without explicit authorization. A local commit is not permission for any of those. - Don't rewrite published history, retag a release, or force-push a shared ref. - Don't commit `AGENTS.md` / `CLAUDE.md` operator controls that live outside the product repository into a public repo. - Don't stage another writer's dirty files to get a clean commit. - Don't merge on a green rollup alone when a review thread has open findings. - Don't harvest or close from a PR title or label — review the code, tests, comments, and checks. - Don't add another legacy call site for convenience once a replacement architecture is adopted. Declared migrations are one-way. - Don't leave new enforcement live: keep it dry-run/advisory unless approved. ## Output - The landing shape you chose and why (direct main / worktree / integration). - Commit SHAs, branch name, and whether the branch is local-only or pushed. - The credit trailers applied and to whom. - The gate artifact's literal verdict at merge time, if a gate applies. - Exactly which public actions you took, and which you deliberately did not.