A workflow for copying a merged pull request's changes to one or more older release branches. A pull request is a proposed code change, and a release branch is a maintained line of software.

Use it to backport a merged pull request, including choosing branches from its JIRA fix versions and resolving cherry-picks.

It removes the manual work of finding target branches, checking previous bot failures, and handling related JIRA tickets.

backport — Skill for Claude Code by quay

Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/quay/ai-helpers

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/quay/ai-helpers/backport

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install dev, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 1 command.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/quay/ai-helpers/backport.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/quay/ai-helpers/backport)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/quay/ai-helpers/backport"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/quay/ai-helpers/backport.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,550 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00045	$0.01550
Opus 5	$0.00023	$0.00775
Sonnet 5	$0.00009	$0.00310
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00155

Measured 2d ago against content hash f0260d109b94, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

backport 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 2d ago.

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.

plugins/dev/skills/backport/SKILL.md · 172 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 172 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Backport PR

Backport merged PR #$ARGUMENTS[0] to release branches.

PR number: $ARGUMENTS[0]
Branch (optional): $ARGUMENTS[1] — if omitted, derive from JIRA fixVersions

Phase 1: Discovery

Step 1: Verify PR is merged

gh pr view "$ARGUMENTS[0]" --json state,mergedAt,mergeCommit,title,baseRefName

The PR must be merged. If not, inform the user and stop. Extract:

mergeCommit.oid — the merge commit SHA
title — extract the JIRA key (pattern: PROJQUAY-\d+ or similar prefix)
baseRefName — should be master

Step 2: Determine backport branches

If $ARGUMENTS[1] is provided, use it as the sole target branch. Skip to Phase 2.

Otherwise, fetch JIRA fields to compute branches:

bash .claude/scripts/jira-ops.sh get-fix-versions <TICKET-KEY>
bash .claude/scripts/jira-ops.sh check-version <TICKET-KEY>

Version → Branch mapping: Strip quay-v prefix, extract major.minor, prepend redhat-. Examples: quay-v3.17.z → redhat-3.17, quay-v3.16.2 → redhat-3.16.

Backport branches = branches from Fix Versions, minus the branch matching Target Version (that's the branch the original ticket already covers).

Validate each branch exists:

git ls-remote --heads upstream redhat-X.Y

If no backport branches remain, report "no backports needed" and stop.

Phase 2: Per-Branch State Detection

For each backport branch, determine its current state before acting:

Check 1: Existing backport PR

gh pr list --repo quay/quay --base <BRANCH> --state all \
  --search "cherry-pick-$ARGUMENTS[0]-to-<BRANCH>" \
  --json number,title,state,headRefName

If a merged backport PR exists → skip this branch, report "already backported"
If an open backport PR exists → skip this branch, report the PR URL

Check 2: Prior bot failure

Search the original PR's comments for the cherry-pick robot's failure message:

gh pr view "$ARGUMENTS[0]" --repo quay/quay --json comments \
  --jq '[.comments[] | select(.author.login == "openshift-cherrypick-robot") | select(.body | test("failed to apply on top of branch"))] | length'

Read the full file on GitHub · 172 lines

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.

2d ago First seen · 172 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A f0260d109b94

Subscribe to this mod's changes

backport is a skill published in the GitHub repository quay/ai-helpers (3 stars, last pushed 20d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 1,550 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-04.

Git and workflow Releases

release-announcement

Write a release announcement — changelog, blog post, in-app note, or social post — that leads with user impact, names the audience, and includes upgrade/migration steps without filler.

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agent-release-swarm

Agent skill for release-swarm - invoke with $agent-release-swarm.

ruvnet/ruflo · 19 tokens

multi-agent-release-manager

Cleans up the workspace, formats code, runs presubmit checks, and uploads CLs to Gerrit.

chromium/chromium · 27 tokens

release-notes

Generate user-facing release notes from tickets, PRDs, or changelogs. Creates clear, engaging summaries organized by category (new features, improvements, fixes). Use when writing release notes, creating changelogs, announcing product updates, or summarizing what shipped.

phuryn/pm-skills · 57 tokens

pack-submit

Package one of this agent's own skills as a standalone community pack and submit it to the aeon registry as a PR.

aeonfun/aeon · 27 tokens

updater_guide

Guidance for checking for and installing Row-Bot updates.

siddsachar/row-bot · 17 tokens