Existing Pull Request Updater
Sync the branch, run checks, and publish new changes to an existing pull request.
The skill explicitly directs the agent to pull incoming changes, resolve conflicts, commit, and push updates to an existing PR, creating meaningful external state changes. It lacks staged user confirmation, credential and data-flow disclosure, rollback guidance, and least-privilege scoping, so points are deducted. No red-line risk in the supplied material is established.
The sequence is internally coherent, and the repository context provides compile, hygiene, and commit-related capabilities. However, the actual commands, conflict-resolution policy, failure diagnostics, and abnormal-input feedback are unspecified. This is a static review, so the calibration cap keeps the score at or below 10.
The name and description clearly target updating an existing PR for the current session. Boundaries are missing for no existing PR, no incoming changes, unresolvable conflicts, non-GitHub environments, and other unsupported cases; inputs, outputs, Chinese-language support, and network fit are also unspecified.
The skill has a concise name, trigger description, and linear procedure, while repository context supplies MIT licensing and official Microsoft provenance. The skill itself lacks installation and dependency notes, stable parameters, examples, FAQs, known limitations, version/change history, and an explicit maintenance path, so points are deducted.
The procedure covers synchronization, compilation and hygiene checks, committing, and PR updates, so the core outcome is plausible. However, compile and hygiene tasks, significance thresholds, completion criteria, and output verification are undefined; static evidence cannot establish directly usable results, so points are deducted.
The skill text is auditable, package.json exposes compile and hygiene scripts, and some CI provides repository-level execution evidence. The supplied CI does not cover this skill's key path, and there are no dedicated tests, representative outputs, or independent reproduction evidence, so points are deducted.
- Obtain explicit user confirmation before pulling, merging, committing, or pushing external changes, and preserve a recoverable branch or commit point.
- Document exact commands, stop conditions for unresolved conflicts, failure diagnostics, and credential or sensitive-data handling.
- Define behavior when no PR exists, no incoming changes exist, GitHub is unavailable, or the remote repository cannot be reached.
What it does & when to use it
This skill updates the existing pull request for the current session. It checks whether the pull request contains commits missing from the current branch, then pulls those changes and resolves merge conflicts when necessary. It runs compile and hygiene tasks, commits any remaining uncommitted changes, and revises the pull request title and description when the changes are significant. It then updates the pull request with the new commits and information.
Reads the pull request information appended to the prompt; checks for commits present in the pull request but absent from the current branch; pulls incoming changes and resolves merge conflicts; runs compile and hygiene tasks and fixes errors; invokes the “/commit” skill for uncommitted changes; updates the pull request title and description when changes are significant; and updates the pull request with the new commits and information.
- A maintainer is continuing work on an existing pull request and must incorporate incoming commits first.
- A developer has made follow-up changes and needs compilation and hygiene checks before publishing them.
- A pull request has changed substantially and its title and description need to be kept accurate.
Pros & cons
- Covers synchronization, conflict handling, compilation, hygiene checks, committing, and pull request metadata updates in one workflow.
- Targets the existing pull request associated with the current session, which suits incremental development.
- Uses a minimal SKILL.md with standard name and description frontmatter.
- The source does not specify the compile commands, hygiene tasks, or conflict-resolution procedure.
- It depends on an external “/commit” skill whose implementation and installation are not provided.
- No test suite, platform support matrix, or failure-recovery details are documented.
How to install
The skill is located at src/vs/sessions/skills/update-pr/SKILL.md in the microsoft/vscode repository. The supplied README documents the repository and the bundled collection, but does not provide a standalone installation command for this skill; no additional installation steps can be verified from the source.
How to use
In a client that supports the skill, use a request such as “Update the existing pull request for the current session and push my new changes.” The prompt must contain the relevant pull request information; the source does not document a specific trigger syntax.