git-advanced-workflows

Git Advanced Workflows

Master advanced Git techniques to maintain clean history, collaborate effectively, and recover from any situation with confidence.

When to Use This Skill

• Cleaning up commit history before merging
• Applying specific commits across branches
• Finding commits that introduced bugs
• Working on multiple features simultaneously
• Recovering from Git mistakes or lost commits
• Managing complex branch workflows
• Preparing clean PRs for review
• Synchronizing diverged branches

Which Tool for Which Situation

Situation	Tool	Reference
Clean up / squash / reword / reorder / split commits before a PR	Interactive rebase	references/rebase.md
Update a feature branch with main, decide rebase vs merge	Rebase / merge	references/rebase.md
Apply a single commit (e.g. hotfix) to other branches/releases	Cherry-pick	references/cherry-pick.md
Apply only specific files from a commit	Partial cherry-pick	references/cherry-pick.md
Find the commit that introduced a bug	Bisect	references/bisect.md
Work on multiple branches at once without stashing	Worktrees	references/worktrees.md
Recover lost commits / deleted branches / undo a bad reset	Reflog & recovery	references/reflog-recovery.md
Abort an in-progress rebase/merge/cherry-pick/bisect	Recovery commands	references/reflog-recovery.md
Safety rules before rewriting shared history	Best practices & pitfalls	references/history-rewrite.md

Read the matching references/*.md file when you need the detailed commands and worked examples for that situation. Load only the references relevant to the task at hand.

References

• references/rebase.md - interactive rebase operations, clean-up-before-PR workflow, rebase vs merge strategy, autosquash, splitting commits.
• references/cherry-pick.md - cherry-picking single commits/ranges, hotfix-to-multiple-releases workflow, partial (per-file) cherry-pick.
• references/bisect.md - manual and automated git bisect to locate a bug-introducing commit.
• references/worktrees.md - managing multiple worktrees for simultaneous multi-branch development.
• references/reflog-recovery.md - using reflog to recover lost commits/branches, undo resets, and abort in-progress operations.
• references/history-rewrite.md - cross-cutting best practices and common pitfalls when rewriting history (force-with-lease, backups, public branches).