git-safety

To prevent force push and history rewrites on protected branches, you need guardrails that enforce strict branch-based restrictions blocking commits, pushes, merges, rebases, and resets on branches like main and release/*.

The safe pull request workflow for feature development requires verifying the current branch, creating a dedicated feature branch, and routing all changes through Pull Requests rather than direct protected-branch writes to ensure safe release workflows.

To validate planned git actions before pushing to a release branch, use a pre-push branch-target verification checklist that ensures you are on a non-protected feature branch before attempting any merge, rebase, or reset.

If you accidentally commit to a protected branch like main, the defined error recovery path uses stashing and branch switching to safely move your changes to a feature branch without breaking production or release workflows.

You need protected branch guardrails for your release workflow whenever an AI agent or automated process must reason about branch targeting and history-rewrite commands, reducing the risk of breaking production or release branches.