babysit

Babysit a PR

Claude Code analog of Cursor's built-in /babysit. The implementation is a loop over gh CLI plus the Claude Code loop skill for pacing.

When to use

• A PR is open and the user explicitly wants the agent to keep it green.
• The poteto-mode opening-a-pr playbook routes here after gh pr create.
• A subagent that opens a PR does NOT babysit — return to the parent and let the parent decide.

Steps

1. Fetch PR state.

   gh pr view <number> --json number,title,state,mergeable,reviewDecision,statusCheckRollup,mergeStateStatus,comments,reviews
   

2. Triage in priority order.

   • Merge conflicts (mergeStateStatus == DIRTY): rebase or merge main; resolve; force-push only if the branch is yours and not shared.
   • Failing checks (statusCheckRollup entries with conclusion: FAILURE): pull logs with gh run view <run-id> --log-failed. Root-cause the failure; fix the underlying code or test; commit; push.
   • Review comments (gh pr view --json comments,reviews): act only on feedback you agree with. For clear fixes (typo, naming, missing null check, style), apply and commit with a message that names the comment. For anything design-shaped or unclear, leave it for the user and write what you would have done in a reply.

3. Loop. Use the Claude Code loop skill to pace re-checks. Pick the interval from what you're watching:

   • Active CI run: poll gh pr checks --watch (it blocks until checks finish, so no separate loop interval needed).
   • Awaiting reviewer: 20–30 min heartbeat.
   • Idle but want to catch new comments: hourly.

4. Stop conditions.

   • All checks green, no unresolved comments, no conflicts → report ready.
   • 3 fix-push-check cycles attempted without full resolution → report what's still failing and hand back.
   • A fix requires a design decision → ask the user via AskUserQuestion.

5. Report. Summarize fixes applied, comments addressed, comments deferred (with reason), current PR status. Cite each commit by SHA.

Hard rules

• Never force-push to a shared PR branch. If history needs rewriting, ask first.
• Never modify a test assertion to make a test pass unless the behavior change was intentional and the test was tracking the old behavior.
• Never skip hooks (--no-verify).
• Never bypass a failing check by marking it as not required.
• gh pr ready only when all checks are green and no unresolved review comments remain.

Cross-refs

• poteto-mode opens here after a PR is opened.
• Use interrogate before opening if the diff is contested; once open, babysit takes over.
• Use unslop on any prose you write here (PR comments, commit messages, status reports).

Provenance

This is a Claude Code analog, not a port of Cursor's /babysit. Cursor's implementation is closed source; the workflow above is reconstructed from upstream pstack references and the public community version at spencerpauly/awesome-cursor-skills/babysitting-pr.