Finishing a Development Branch

Principle

Verify first, preserve workspace ownership, then ask for the integration decision. Branch completion never grants remote mutation authority.

1. Verify

Run the repository's full required test command and inspect the exit status. If it fails, report the failures and stop the finishing flow.

2. Inspect Local State

Read-only checks should establish:

• current branch or detached state;
• base branch evidence;
• changed, staged, and untracked files;
• whether this checkout is a worktree and who appears to own it;
• local commits not contained in the base branch.

Do not clean, reset, delete, merge, or switch branches during inspection.

3. Use NeedsUser for the Decision

Present the verified state and ask the human to choose one bounded outcome:

1. integrate locally;
2. request separately approved remote publication;
3. preserve the branch and worktree as-is;
4. discard work after explicit destructive confirmation.

Record this as a NeedsUser decision when the flow is running inside Yardlet. Do not reinterpret silence or a branch classification as approval.

4. Execute Only the Chosen, Authorized Path

Local integration still requires a clean ownership check and verification on the integrated result. Any remote write or pull-request creation stays behind the existing explicit approval gate. Destructive cleanup requires an exact, informed confirmation describing the branch, commits, and worktree affected.

Never remove harness-owned worktrees. Never remove a worktree before successful integration is verified. Preserve unrelated staged or untracked files.

Completion Evidence

Report the chosen outcome, commands actually run, fresh validation result, and the final local branch/worktree state. If authorization was not provided, stop at NeedsUser without performing the gated action.