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jschoubben 050a2d08e8 Playbook 07: a feature worktree needs the siblings the lab reads

A bed run from .work/<slug>/mesh-lab derives mesh-tools and mesh-sdk by
sibling path and fails at once when the directory holds only the touched
repos. Detached worktrees on main, never symlinks.

2026-09-21 00:27:01 +02:00

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Playbook 07 — Feature branches across repos

Trigger. Work that changes code — in one code repo or in several at once (mesh-sdk, mesh-controller, mesh-catalog, mesh-host, mesh-lab, and hq when a decision rides along).

Who runs it. Anyone who writes code, engineers and agents alike. Agents follow it exactly — it is the guard against the failure it was written for.

The failure it prevents

A feature was worked as a branch-and-MR per unit of thought — one per decision, one per stacked increment — and each MR was treated as finished when it was opened, not when it was merged. Across repos the same feature took a different branch name in each. The MRs piled up unmerged: one session left sixteen stacked intermediate MRs that had to be consolidated and closed by hand. An MR is a review checkpoint, not a scratchpad.

The rule

One feature is one branch name, one worktree per repo, one MR per repo, opened once, at the end.

Name the feature once. feat/<slug>. The same branch name in every repo the feature touches — never a different name per repo, never a fresh branch per increment within the feature.
Isolate each repo. One git worktree per touched repo under .work/<slug>/<repo>, branched off main:
```
git worktree add .work/<slug>/<repo> -b feat/<slug> origin/main
```
Parallel features never collide, and no shared checkout is edited.

Add the untouched siblings the lab reads. The lab beds find the other repositories by sibling path from the lab checkout (../mesh-tools/module.json, ../mesh-sdk, …), the way the main layout has them. A .work/<slug>/ directory holding only the touched repos fails a bed at once with no manifest for mesh-tools at …/.work/<slug>/mesh-tools/module.json, after genesis has already passed. Give the directory those repos as detached worktrees on main — never symlinks:
```
git worktree add --detach .work/<slug>/mesh-tools main
```
Commit as you go — locally. Increments land on the one branch. Nothing is pushed and no MR is opened mid-feature.
Finish, then publish. When the whole feature is done — every repo, tests green — push every branch and open one MR per touched repo, together.
Merge promptly, once approved. Every merge into main is notified and approved (ADR 0023); once it is, merge — do not leave it sitting. The branch is deleted on merge.
Leave nothing behind. After the MRs merge, no feat/<slug> branch and no .work/<slug> worktree survive.

What this is not

Not a licence to batch unbounded work. A feature is a bounded unit; if it sprawls for days, end-of-feature bloat merely replaces per-increment bloat. Split it into features, each its own branch and MR.
Not a second trunk. Every repo branches off main. There is no longer an initialization trunk.

How it is checked

The end state is visible, and its absence is the smell:

After a feature merges, git branch -r | grep feat/<slug> and git worktree list return nothing for it. A surviving branch or worktree means step 6 was skipped.
A bed run from .work/<slug>/mesh-lab that fails naming a .work/<slug>/<repo>/… path it cannot find is a missing sibling worktree, not a mesh fault.
More than one open MR in a repo that share no feature name, or a stack of MRs none of which is merged, is the failure this playbook exists to prevent — stop and consolidate before opening more.

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