Gentle AI Chained PR

Activation Contract

Load this skill when a planned PR may exceed 400 changed lines, an ODD feature's forecast or running authored changed-line count from work-unit commits exceeds about 400, or the user asks for chained/stacked PRs, review slices, or reviewer-load control. The per-task advisory 400 authored-line heuristic does not itself require a PR split.

Hard Rules

• Recommend slicing PRs over 400 changed lines; offer the ordered oversized-delivery menu below and follow the user's selection subject to the destination repository's documented contribution/size policy.
• size:exception is a Gentle-owned repository policy, not a universal label requirement. Never request, create, or add this label for generic users unless the destination policy uses it. Preserve that policy's maintainer acceptance gates and protected-label human authorization; selection alone grants neither.
• The budget constrains how work is sliced, never the code itself. Never delete comments, blank lines, docs, or tests, and never compress or restyle code, to fit under the budget.
• Slicing is bounded: make one honest slicing pass. If no cohesive split brings every slice within budget, stop iterating, keep the best cohesive split, and report the final line count and rationale. Recommend a size exception only when the destination policy provides that route.
• Keep each PR reviewable in about ≤60 minutes.
• In a chain, use one deliverable work unit per PR; keep tests/docs with the unit they verify. A selected single PR may contain multiple coherent work-unit commits.
• State start, end, prior dependencies, follow-up work, and out-of-scope items in every chained PR.
• Every child PR must include a dependency diagram marking the current PR with 📍.
• In Feature Branch Chain, create a draft/no-merge tracker PR; child PR #1 targets the tracker branch, later children target the immediate parent branch.
• Treat polluted diffs as base bugs: retarget or rebase until only the current work unit appears.
• Do not mix chain strategies after the user chooses one.
• Before creating branches or PRs, verify the target repository's default branch; use it as the integration base, not an assumed main. stacked-to-main is the historical strategy token even when the default branch has another name.

Oversized Delivery Menu

Offer exactly three choices in this semantic order; English examples are illustrative and localizable, not mandatory copy. Generate the complete user-facing question, every option label, description, and recommendation marker in the active user's conversation language (English for an English user, Spanish for a Spanish user, etc.). Machine strategy tokens remain unchanged and untranslated.

1. Feature/tracker branch chain — chain_strategy=feature-branch-chain; review child slices before final feature integration.
2. Verified default/main branch chain — chain_strategy=stacked-to-main; land independently reviewable slices in order on the verified default branch, whatever its name.
3. One single PR — least recommended — delivery_strategy=single-pr; keep the entire change in one PR rather than a chain.

The third choice overrides the pending chaining path: clear the chain choice as inapplicable and suppress later chain prompts. single-pr is not a chain_strategy token. Do not automatically select exception-ok or imply an accepted policy exception.

The least recommended marker applies only to this oversized menu. An oversized single PR increases reviewer cognitive load, slows feedback, and couples rollback of otherwise separable work; a focused single PR within 400 changed lines remains reasonable. Delivery selection does not authorize push, PR creation, merge, or changes to review mode or candidate consent.

Decision Gates