Work With PR — Full PR Lifecycle

You are executing a complete PR lifecycle: from isolated worktree setup through implementation, PR creation, and an unbounded verification loop until the PR is merged. The loop has three gates — CI, review-work, and Cubic — and you keep fixing and pushing until all three pass simultaneously.

Phase 0: Setup         → Branch + worktree in sibling directory
Phase 1: Implement     → Do the work, atomic commits
Phase 2: PR Creation   → Push, create PR targeting dev
Phase 3: Verify Loop   → Unbounded iteration until ALL gates pass:
  ├─ Gate A: CI         → gh pr checks (bun test, typecheck, build)
  ├─ Gate B: review-work → 5-agent parallel review
  └─ Gate C: Cubic      → cubic-dev-ai[bot] "No issues found"
Phase 4: Merge         → Merge commit, worktree cleanup

Phase 0: Setup

Create an isolated worktree so the user's main working directory stays clean. This matters because the user may have uncommitted work, and checking out a branch would destroy it.

1. Resolve repository context

REPO=$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner)
REPO_NAME=$(basename "$PWD")
BASE_BRANCH="dev"  # CI blocks PRs to master

2. Create branch

If user provides a branch name, use it. Otherwise, derive from the task:

# Auto-generate: feature/short-description or fix/short-description
BRANCH_NAME="feature/$(echo "$TASK_SUMMARY" | tr '[:upper:] ' '[:lower:]-' | head -c 50)"
git fetch origin "$BASE_BRANCH"
git branch "$BRANCH_NAME" "origin/$BASE_BRANCH"

3. Create worktree

Place worktrees as siblings to the repo — not inside it. This avoids git nested repo issues and keeps the working tree clean.

WORKTREE_PATH="../${REPO_NAME}-wt/${BRANCH_NAME}"
mkdir -p "$(dirname "$WORKTREE_PATH")"
git worktree add "$WORKTREE_PATH" "$BRANCH_NAME"

4. Set working context

All subsequent work happens inside the worktree. Install dependencies if needed:

cd "$WORKTREE_PATH"
# If bun project:
[ -f "bun.lock" ] && bun install

Phase 1: Implement

Do the actual implementation work inside the worktree. The agent using this skill does the work directly — no subagent delegation for the implementation itself.

Scope discipline: For bug fixes, stay minimal. Fix the bug, add a test for it, done. Do not refactor surrounding code, add config options, or "improve" things that aren't broken. The verification loop will catch regressions — trust the process.

Commit strategy

Use the git-master skill's atomic commit principles. The reason for atomic commits: if CI fails on one change, you can isolate and fix it without unwinding everything.

3+ files changed  → 2+ commits minimum
5+ files changed  → 3+ commits minimum
10+ files changed → 5+ commits minimum

Each commit should pair implementation with its tests. Load git-master skill when committing:

task(category="quick", load_skills=["git-master"], prompt="Commit the changes atomically following git-master conventions. Repository is at {WORKTREE_PATH}.")

Pre-push local validation

Before pushing, run the same checks CI will run. Catching failures locally saves a full CI round-trip (~3-5 min):

bun run typecheck
bun test
bun run build

Fix any failures before pushing. Each fix-commit cycle should be atomic.

Phase 2: PR Creation

<pr_creation>

Push and create PR

git push -u origin "$BRANCH_NAME"

Create the PR using the project's template structure:

gh pr create \
  --base "$BASE_BRANCH" \
  --head "$BRANCH_NAME" \
  --title "$PR_TITLE" \
  --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
## Summary
[1-3 sentences describing what this PR does and why]

## Changes
[Bullet list of key changes]

## Testing
- `bun run typecheck` ✅
- `bun test` ✅
- `bun run build` ✅

## Related Issues
[Link to issue if applicable]
EOF
)"

Capture the PR number:

PR_NUMBER=$(gh pr view --json number -q .number)

</pr_creation>

Phase 3: Verification Loop

This is the core of the skill. Three gates must ALL pass for the PR to be ready. The loop has no iteration cap — keep going until done. Gate ordering is intentional: CI is cheapest/fastest, review-work is most thorough, Cubic is external and asynchronous.

<verify_loop>

while true:
  1. Wait for CI          → Gate A
  2. If CI fails          → read logs, fix, commit, push, continue
  3. Run review-work      → Gate B
  4. If review fails      → fix blocking issues, commit, push, continue
  5. Check Cubic          → Gate C
  6. If Cubic has issues   → fix issues, commit, push, continue
  7. All three pass       → break

Gate A: CI Checks

CI is the fastest feedback loop. Wait for it to complete, then parse results.

# Wait for checks to start (GitHub needs a moment after push)
# Then watch for completion
gh pr checks "$PR_NUMBER" --watch --fail-fast

On failure: Get the failed run logs to understand what broke:

# Find the failed run
RUN_ID=$(gh run list --branch "$BRANCH_NAME" --status failure --json databaseId --jq '.[0].databaseId')

# Get failed job logs
gh run view "$RUN_ID" --log-failed

Read the logs, fix the issue, commit atomically, push, and re-enter the loop.

Gate B: review-work

The review-work skill launches 5 parallel sub-agents (goal verification, QA, code quality, security, context mining). All 5 must pass.

Invoke review-work after CI passes — there's no point reviewing code that doesn't build:

task(
  category="unspecified-high",
  load_skills=["review-work"],
  run_in_background=false,
  description="Post-implementation review of PR changes",
  prompt="Review the implementation work on branch {BRANCH_NAME}. The worktree is at {WORKTREE_PATH}. Goal: {ORIGINAL_GOAL}. Constraints: {CONSTRAINTS}. Run command: bun run dev (or as appropriate)."
)

On failure: review-work reports blocking issues with specific files and line numbers. Fix each blocking issue, commit, push, and re-enter the loop from Gate A (since code changed, CI must re-run).

Gate C: Cubic Approval

Cubic (cubic-dev-ai[bot]) is an automated review bot that comments on PRs. It does NOT use GitHub's APPROVED review state — instead it posts comments with issue counts and confidence scores.

Approval signal: The latest Cubic comment contains **No issues found** and confidence **5/5**.

Issue signal: The comment lists issues with file-level detail.

# Get the latest Cubic review
CUBIC_REVIEW=$(gh api "repos/${REPO}/pulls/${PR_NUMBER}/reviews" \
  --jq '[.[] | select(.user.login == "cubic-dev-ai[bot]")] | last | .body')

# Check if approved
if echo "$CUBIC_REVIEW" | grep -q "No issues found"; then
  echo "Cubic: APPROVED"
else
  echo "Cubic: ISSUES FOUND"
  echo "$CUBIC_REVIEW"
fi

On issues: Cubic's review body contains structured issue descriptions. Parse them, determine which are valid (some may be false positives), fix the valid ones, commit, push, re-enter from Gate A.

Cubic reviews are triggered automatically on PR updates. After pushing a fix, wait for the new review to appear before checking again. Use gh api polling with a conditional loop:

# Wait for new Cubic review after push
PUSH_TIME=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)
while true; do
  LATEST_REVIEW_TIME=$(gh api "repos/${REPO}/pulls/${PR_NUMBER}/reviews" \
    --jq '[.[] | select(.user.login == "cubic-dev-ai[bot]")] | last | .submitted_at')
  if [[ "$LATEST_REVIEW_TIME" > "$PUSH_TIME" ]]; then
    break
  fi
  # Use gh api call itself as the delay mechanism — each call takes ~1-2s
  # For longer waits, use: timeout 30 gh pr checks "$PR_NUMBER" --watch 2>/dev/null || true
done

Iteration discipline

Each iteration through the loop:

1. Fix ONLY the issues identified by the failing gate
2. Commit atomically (one logical fix per commit)
3. Push
4. Re-enter from Gate A (code changed → full re-ve