Master advanced Git workflows including rebasing, cherry-picking, bisect, worktrees, and reflog to maintain clean history and recover from any situation. Use when managing complex Git histories, collaborating on feature branches, or troubleshooting repository issues.

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 Core Concepts 1. Interactive Rebase Interactive rebase is the Swiss Army knife of Git history editing. Common Operations: pick : Keep commit as is reword : Change commit message edit : Amend commit content squash : Combine with previous commit fixup : Like squash but discard message drop : Remove commit entirely Basic Usage: 2. Cherry Picking Apply specific commits from one branch to another without merging entire branches. 3. Git Bisect Binary search through commit history to find the commit that introduced a bug. Automated Bisect: 4. Worktrees Work on multiple branches simultaneously without stashing or switching. 5. Reflog Your safety net tracks all ref movements, even deleted commits. Detailed patterns and worked examples Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md . Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient. Best Practices 1. Always Use force with lease : Safer than force, prevents overwriting others' work 2. Rebase Only Local Commits : Don't rebase commits that have been pushed and shared 3. Descriptive Commit Messages : Future you will thank present you 4. Atomic Commits : Each commit should be a single logical change 5. Test Before Force Push : Ensure history rewrite didn't break anything 6. Keep Reflog Aware : Remember reflog is your safety net for 90 days 7. Branch Before Risky Operations : Create backup branch before complex rebases Common Pitfalls Rebasing Public Branches : Causes history conflicts for collaborators Force Pushing Without Lease : Can overwrite teammate's work Losing Work in Rebase : Resolve conflicts carefully, test after rebase Forgetting Worktree Cleanup : Orphaned worktrees consume disk space Not Backing Up Before Experiment : Always create safety branch Bisect on Dirty Working Directory : Commit or stash before bisecting Recovery Commands

git-advanced-workflows