Tips for better workflows

Below are some tips and tricks for PR stacking workflows.

1. Name Branches Descriptively

# Good: Shows owner for collaboration and hierarchy in naming
tom/feature-base-auth
tom/feature-auth-backend
tom/feature-auth-frontend
tom/feature-auth-docs

# Bad: Hard to understand relationships
auth-base
auth
backend
frontend

Clear branch names help you and your team understand the stack structure at a glance.

2. Use Feature Bases for Big Features

If you find yourself with more than a couple of branches in a stack, consider using a feature base to organize the work.

Feature bases help you:

Group related work streams
Manage parallel development
Create logical merge points

See the feature-base command for more details.

3. Keep PR Sizes Reasonable

Even in deep stacks, keep individual PRs small:

Aim for < 500 lines changed per PR
One logical change per PR
Stack depth is fine; PR size should be small

Benefits:

Faster reviews
Easier to understand changes
Simpler to fix issues
Lower risk of conflicts

4. Use Draft PRs for WIP

Create PRs as drafts as soon as some work has been done. Convert to ready when the entire stack is complete.

This does the following:

The work is still in progress
Others can see your progress and code changes
Signals they don't need to spend time on detailed review yet
Ensures work is always backed up as soon as you start

5. Sync Frequently

Run prstack sync often:

Before starting new work
After making commits
After merging PRs

Frequent syncing:

Keeps your PRs up to date
Ensures remote is up to date
Reduces merge conflicts when collaborating

6. Communicate with Your Team

When working with stacked PRs, it's good to keep a good naming convention in PR names. Something like dashboard-featurs: api-layer 1 - add basic api layer

note: having PRStack also maintain comments about the stack with links to other PR is something I'm considering. Submit a feature request issue if you'd like to see this.

7. Use the TUI for Exploration

The Terminal UI is great for:

Understanding stack structure and exploring PR structure
Viewing diffs between branches
Creating and merging PRs

Tips & Tricks