GII — Grab Issues Iteratively (aka GIS)

Loop: grab the highest-priority open issue → implement → open MR/PR → ARDI to clean → repeat with the next issue. Stack MRs when needed.

When this fires

  • User says “gii”, “gis”, “grab issues”, “work through the backlog”
  • User says “keep going” / “do all the issues” / “next issue”
  • User says “grab issues iteratively” / “stack them up”

Procedure

0. Establish context

Detect the forge (GitHub / GitLab) from git remote get-url origin. Note the default branch (main / master).

1. Enter the loop

For each iteration:

a. Invoke gi (Grab Issue)

Run the full GI procedure: 1. List open issues, triage/prioritize 2. Present top candidates — let user pick, or auto-proceed if they said “just go” / “do all” / “keep going” 3. Check history 4. Claim the issue 5. Create a branch 6. Open the draft PR up front, from an empty commit, before implementing — see pr-on-claim 7. Implement 8. Push and mark the PR ready for review 9. ARDI to clean

b. Record the result

Track each completed issue in a running table:

# Issue MR/PR Rounds Status
1 #12 #30 2 ✅ Clean

(Examples use GitHub #N notation; on GitLab the MR IID is !N.)

c. Decide the next base branch (stacking)

A clean-but-unmerged MR is not a stopping point. Merging is human-gated (you don’t self-merge), but that gates only the merge, not the loop — keep going to the next issue instead of pausing to wait for a human to merge first. Stacking is what lets the loop keep moving without merges. See stack-dont-pause.

After ARDI completes clean on the current MR/PR:

  • If the MR was merged (user said “merge” or auto-merge is on): base the next branch on origin/main (which now includes the fix).

  • If the MR is open but clean (not yet merged): base the next branch on the current MR’s branch — this creates a stacked MR. Note the dependency in the new MR’s description:

    ⚠️ Stacked on #30 — merge that first.

    Track the stack so the final report shows the merge order.

d. Check stopping conditions

Stop the loop when: - No more open issues (backlog empty) - User interrupts or says “stop” / “that’s enough” - A configurable max is reached (default: 5 issues per session, to avoid unbounded runs — ask the user to continue if hit) - An issue is blocked and no other unblocked issues remain — otherwise bypass the blocked issue (surface it) and keep going with the rest

If stopping due to max-issues, ask: > “Completed 5 issues — want me to keep going, or stop here?”

e. Recurse

Go back to step (a) with the next issue.

Delegate sidecar work when helpful

Within an iteration, hand independent sidecar work off to a subagent via the Agent tool instead of doing it inline — a history/precedent investigation, a verification pass on the implementation, research into how a similar issue was solved elsewhere. Keep the critical path (claim, draft PR, implement, ARDI) on the main thread so the loop keeps moving; this is a single sidecar call within one iteration, not a way to run whole issues concurrently — for that, see gip.

When the sidecar task is judgment-heavy (a tricky bug hunt, an architecturally significant call, an adversarial review pass before the implementation goes out for real review), give the subagent a stronger model via the Agent tool’s model parameter (e.g. model: 'opus') instead of leaving it at the session default. Symmetrically, override to a cheaper/faster tier (model: 'fable' or 'haiku') for mechanical, bounded sidecar work — a lookup, a formatting check, a repeated verification — rather than defaulting to the session’s own tier; see select-model’s decision tree for both directions. When the sidecar task is a heavy fan-out read/draft/verify pass and a separately-billed provider is available (e.g. the codex CLI), prefer spending that budget first and keep Claude/Agent-tool quota in reserve — see delegate-to-codex.

Stacking rules

When stacking MRs (basing a new branch on an unmerged MR branch):

  1. Branch from the tip of the previous MR branch, not from main:

    git checkout -b feat/<next-slug> <previous-mr-branch>

  2. Note the dependency in the new MR description (use #<N> on GitHub, !<N> on GitLab):

    ⚠️ Stacked on #<N> (GitHub) / !<N> (GitLab) — merge that first.

Depends on: #<N>

  3. If the base MR gets changes (from ARDI on a later review round), rebase/merge the stacked MR on top of the updated base before its own ARDI round.

  4. Merge order matters — report it clearly at the end.

Final report

When the loop ends, print a summary:

## GII Session Summary — <timestamp>

| # | Issue | MR/PR | Rounds | Status |
|---|-------|-------|--------|--------|
| 1 | [#12](url) | [#30](url) | 2 | ✅ Clean |
| 2 | [#8](url)  | [#31](url) | 1 | ✅ Clean |
| 3 | [#15](url) | [#32](url) | 3 | ✅ Clean |

### Merge order
1. [#30](url) — fix: auth timeout
2. [#31](url) — feat: retry logic (stacked on #30)
3. [#32](url) — docs: v3 migration guide

Relationship to other skills

  • gip — the parallel counterpart: when a batch of issues is provably independent (no stacking dependency, no file overlap), gip lifts that subset out and works it concurrently in worktree-isolated subagents instead of serially. This loop stays serial for everything gip can’t prove independent.
  • gi — the inner loop; each iteration is a full GI invocation
  • pr-on-claim — each iteration opens its draft PR up front (step 6) so the in-flight issue is visible before implementing
  • ardi — drives each MR/PR to clean review within GI
  • check-history — invoked per-issue to avoid undoing past work
  • split-concerns — if an issue’s implementation grows too large, split
  • defer-issue — if sub-tasks emerge, defer them (they’ll be picked up in a later iteration of this very loop)
  • sync-pr-branch — used when stacking to keep branches current
  • select-model — decision tree for picking a subagent’s model tier when delegating sidecar work (see “Delegate sidecar work when helpful”)
  • delegate-to-codex — when a sidecar task is a heavy fan-out read/draft/verify pass and codex is available, prefer it first

Auto-proceed mode

If the user says “just go”, “do all”, “work through everything”, or similar: - Skip the per-issue confirmation (“I’d grab #12 — proceed?”) - Still pause at the max-issues checkpoint - Surface and bypass a blocked or ambiguous issue — note it and skip to the next rather than halting; stop only if no independent issues remain (per the stopping conditions above)

Anti-patterns

  • ❌ Stacking more than 3–4 MRs deep without asking (merge conflicts compound)
  • ❌ Grabbing issues assigned to someone else
  • ❌ Continuing after a blocked issue without telling the user
  • ❌ Forgetting to note stack dependencies in MR descriptions
  • ❌ Basing on main when the previous MR hasn’t merged yet and the next issue would edit the same passages it changes — that almost always conflicts; run stack-prs’s decision gate (same file but different regions usually merges cleanly from main and doesn’t need the stack)
  • ❌ Pausing after a clean-but-unmerged MR to wait for a human merge — you don’t self-merge, but that’s no reason to stop; keep going and stack the next issue
  • ❌ Running unbounded without a checkpoint — always pause at 5
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