/approve — Push PR to Auto-Merge

When to Use

User says /approve after reviewing a completed task in a worker worktree. This replaces the manual merge-to-main workflow.

What It Does

1. •Pushes current branch to origin
2. •Creates a PR against main
3. •Enables auto-merge (GitHub merges automatically when CI passes)
4. •Updates Linear issue status to "In Review"

Prerequisites

• •Must be on a task branch (e.g., task/REG-XXX), NOT on main
• •All changes must be committed (no uncommitted changes)
• •Steve Jobs review should have been completed before calling this

Steps

1. Validate State

# Get current branch
BRANCH=$(git branch --show-current)

# Must not be on main
if [ "$BRANCH" = "main" ]; then
  echo "ERROR: Cannot approve from main branch"
  exit 1
fi

# Must have clean working tree
if [ -n "$(git status --porcelain)" ]; then
  echo "ERROR: Uncommitted changes exist. Commit first."
  exit 1
fi

2. Push Branch

git push -u origin "$BRANCH"

3. Create PR

Create PR with title and body derived from the task:

• •Title: Extract from Linear issue if REG-XXX is in branch name, otherwise use branch name
• •Body: Include summary of changes from commits on this branch (vs main)

# Get commits unique to this branch
git log main..HEAD --oneline

# Create PR
gh pr create --title "..." --body "..."

If PR already exists, skip creation and use existing PR.

4. Enable Auto-Merge

# Get PR number
PR_URL=$(gh pr view --json url --jq '.url')

# Enable auto-merge with merge commit strategy
gh pr merge --auto --merge

This tells GitHub: "merge this PR automatically when all required status checks pass."

5. Update Linear

Extract issue ID from branch name (e.g., task/REG-123 → REG-123).

Update Linear issue status to In Review using mcp__linear__update_issue.

6. Report

Print summary:

• •PR URL
• •Auto-merge status: enabled
• •CI checks: running (will merge when green)
• •Linear status: updated to "In Review"

What Happens Next

• •GitHub CI runs automatically (Tests, Typecheck & Lint, Build, Version Sync)
• •When ALL checks pass → PR auto-merges to main
• •If merge conflict → auto-merge fails, GitHub sends notification on the PR
• •User resolves conflict by telling worker to rebase: git rebase main && git push --force-with-lease

Notifications

Conflicts and CI failures appear as:

• •GitHub notification (bell icon on github.com)
• •Email (if GitHub email notifications enabled)
• •Failed status check on the PR page
• •Comment on PR explaining the failure reason

Multiple Workers

Multiple workers can /approve simultaneously. Since strict: false is set in branch protection:

• •All PRs run CI concurrently against current main
• •PRs merge in order as CI completes
• •No need to wait for one PR to merge before the next starts CI
• •If a merge conflict occurs after another PR merges, only that specific PR needs a rebase