Git Cherry-Pick Release Strategy

Step-by-step process for comparing branches, grouping commits by criticality, and building cherry-pick commands for selective release management — without pulling in all unreleased staging work.

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Andreas Beasley

Updated 2026-04-02

v1.0Internal

When to Use

Use this skill when you need to:

Compare two branches and list commits present in one but not the other
Cherry-pick specific commits into a release branch for a targeted patch release
Assess the criticality of pending changes before a release cut
Filter out staging merge wrappers and branch-sync commits from a candidate list
Build a cherry-pick command ordered oldest → newest with conflict-risk grouping
Confirm and execute a cherry-pick plan interactively, step by step

Installation

Run this command in your terminal to install via the Auggie CLI:

auggie skill add /api/skills/git-cherry-pick-strategy

Tool Definition

Anthropic JSON schema for model orchestration:

{
  "name": "git_cherry_pick_strategy",
  "description": "Guides a step-by-step cherry-pick release strategy: compares a source branch (e.g. staging) against a release branch, filters out staging merge wrappers and branch-sync commits, groups candidates by criticality using Jira priority and file-risk signals, and builds an ordered cherry-pick command for interactive confirmation before execution.",
  "input_schema": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "sourceBranch": {
        "type": "string",
        "description": "The branch containing commits to cherry-pick from (e.g. 'staging', 'origin/staging')."
      },
      "releaseBranch": {
        "type": "string",
        "description": "The release branch to cherry-pick into (e.g. 'release/release-1.0.41'). Accepts a version string like '1.0.41' and resolves it to the full branch name."
      },
      "autoExecute": {
        "type": "boolean",
        "description": "If true, execute the confirmed cherry-pick command after user approval. Defaults to false — always ask before running git commands."
      }
    },
    "required": ["sourceBranch", "releaseBranch"]
  }
}

Security Audit

verified_user

Data Handling

No PHI — git metadata only

policy

Scope

Internal Developer Use