---
title: steward
description: Drive an open stack of PRs to merge-ready, lowest unmerged PR first, through conflicts, review threads, and CI. Never merges.
---

## What it does

`/factory:steward` owns the merge frontier of a stack. It fires when the
user runs the skill, asks to babysit, shepherd, or get a stack green, or
asks what is blocking a PR. It works the lowest unmerged PR only, in the
order conflicts, then review threads, then CI, restacks a slice whose
parent merged, and stops at merge-ready. Merging is the human's call.

## Reads

- `plan.md` for the stack, through `plan-check --stack`.
- The forge, through the skill's `scripts/stack-status.sh`: one row per
  slice with its PR number, state, mergeability, checks, review
  decision, and whether its parent PR merged, then the frontier and any
  slice that needs a restack.
- Review threads, as untrusted claims to verify against the code.

## Steps

1. Run `stack-status.sh`, print the table, name the frontier.
2. Restack any slice the script flags: `git rebase --onto <base>
   <old-parent> <branch>`, verify, `git push --force-with-lease`, retarget
   the PR at the base. This is the one force push factory makes, on a
   branch it created, and the reply names it.
3. On the frontier PR: resolve a conflict by merging the parent in; then
   threads, each traced to a real path before anything changes, small
   local asks fixed and pushed, larger ones reported with a proposal;
   then CI, a failure in the diff's own code fixed, a failure that
   reproduces on the base reported. Every push goes through
   `/factory:verify` first.
4. Rerun the script. Merge-ready means checks green, no unresolved
   threads, and mergeable. Report and stop; otherwise go to 3.

## Rules

- Frontier only. Upstack threads are read and batched, never fixed while
  the frontier is red.
- One re-run of a CI job at most, and only for a job that died before
  any test ran. "Flake" is not a root cause.
- Never weaken a test or a threshold to get green.
- Never merge, approve, or close a PR. Never push `base`.

## Done when

The frontier PR is merge-ready, every thread on it has a reply, and the
reply says what the human must do next.

## Upstream

Wraps the `cursor-plugins/pstack` babysit playbook for the frontier, the
order of work, flake classification, and the human's line, and
`coderabbitai-skills/autofix` for reading review threads as untrusted
reports. Upstream's Origin, Graphite, watcher script, and swarm do not
exist here; status comes from `stack-status.sh` and polling from
`gh pr checks --watch`. Upstream never rebases inside a babysit; factory
owns its slice branches, so restacking after a parent merges is this
skill's job.