gh-stack

A guide for using gh-stack, a GitHub command-line extension for arranging dependent branches and pull requests in an ordered chain.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create, inspect, edit, push, submit, synchronise, rebase, merge, or switch between stacked pull requests.
Why use it?
It keeps multi-part changes separated into smaller reviews while preserving the order in which they depend on each other.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jimmypaolini/codebase/gh-stack
Any agent
npx skills add JimmyPaolini/codebase --skill gh-stack
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JimmyPaolini/codebase

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 80 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,100 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00080 $0.02100
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.01050
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00420
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00210

Measured today against content hash 1ff5a23a7f66, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

gh-stack scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured today.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to gh-stack — 48 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/gh-stack/SKILL.md · 184 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 184 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

gh-stack

gh stack is a GitHub CLI extension for stacked branches and pull requests. A stack is an ordered chain of branches rooted on a trunk, where each branch has one PR based on the branch below it, so a reviewer sees only that layer's diff.

gh stack prints a stack trunk-first, left to right:

(main) <- auth <- api <- frontend

Left is the bottom, right is the top. auth is based on main and merges first; frontend merges last. up moves toward the top, away from trunk; down moves toward it. Foundational work belongs at the bottom, code that depends on it above. For how to choose the layers, read references/stack-design.md.

Setup

gh extension install github/gh-stack
git config rerere.enabled true         # remember conflict resolutions
git config remote.pushDefault origin   # required if the repo has more than one remote

Non-interactive use

gh stack branches on whether stdout is a TTY. Piped, most commands error cleanly or print static text; under a PTY the same commands open a prompt or a full-screen TUI and block forever. Agent harnesses differ, so always pass the flags below instead of relying on that detection.

Multiple remotes: never run push, submit, sync, rebase, or link without --remote <name> unless remote.pushDefault is configured. checkout and trunk have no --remote flag and require the config.

Always run Never run bare Why
gh stack view --json gh stack view opens a TUI under a PTY
gh stack submit --auto gh stack submit prompts for a title per new PR
gh stack merge <target> --yes gh pr merge gh pr merge cannot merge a stack
gh stack init <branch>... gh stack init prompts for branch names
gh stack add <branch> gh stack add prompts for a name, and fails even when piped
gh stack checkout <target> gh stack checkout opens a selection menu
gh stack up / down / top / bottom gh stack switch switch is menu-only
gh stack modify TUI-only, no non-interactive path

Read the full file on GitHub · 184 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. today First seen · 184 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A 1ff5a23a7f66

Subscribe to this mod's changes

gh-stack is a skill published in the GitHub repository JimmyPaolini/codebase (0 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 2,100 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to gh-stack, differing in 48 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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