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gh chain

Don't know when you get off the gh stack waitlist but still want some easy UX around stacking? A few lines of bash is all you need: gh-chain

Install

Quite similar to other gh CLI extensions:

$ gh extension install harsh183/gh-chain

Commands

  1. $ gh chain - Stack a new gh pr create without having to track the previous PR
  • Identifies the previous branch we branched off
  • passes that into gh pr create -B
  1. $ gh chain q "commit message" or $ gh chain quick "commit message" - For when you just want to stack all uncommited changes as the next layer
  • git checkout -b a placeholder branch with a timestamp.
  • git add -A
  • git commit -m with whatever message you pass
  • gh chain with the above steps
  • Need a real branch name, more granular adding, or multiple commits? Use gh chain similar to example 3.

If you want to save some keystrokes, try out these aliases

$ gh alias set c 'chain'
$ gh alias set cq 'chain quick'

Example

Let us dogfood this very script to show how it works

  1. Starting off main with the first version of this script
gh-chain (main) $ gh chain q "flesh out the script v1"
Switched to a new branch 'quick/20260622221236'
[quick/20260622221236 8027a43] flesh out the script v1
 1 file changed, 33 insertions(+), 29 deletions(-)
Base: main
? Where should we push the 'quick/20260622221236' branch? harsh183/gh-chain

Creating pull request for quick/20260622221236 into main in harsh183/gh-chain

? Title (required) flesh out the script v1
? Body <Received>
? What's next? Submit
remote:
remote:
To github.com:harsh183/gh-chain.git
 * [new branch]      HEAD -> quick/20260622221236
branch 'quick/20260622221236' set up to track 'origin/quick/20260622221236'.
https://github.com/harsh183/gh-chain/pull/1
  1. Now let me make a small change and stack
gh-chain (quick/20260622221236|✔) $ vim gh-chain
gh-chain (quick/20260622221236|✚1) $ gh chain q "make number larger"
Switched to a new branch 'quick/20260622221349'
[quick/20260622221349 70e83f6] make number larger
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
Base: quick/20260622221236
? Where should we push the 'quick/20260622221349' branch? harsh183/gh-chain

Creating pull request for quick/20260622221349 into quick/20260622221236 in harsh183/gh-chain

? Title (required) make number larger
? Body <Received>
? What's next? Submit
remote:
remote:
To github.com:harsh183/gh-chain.git
 * [new branch]      HEAD -> quick/20260622221349
branch 'quick/20260622221349' set up to track 'origin/quick/20260622221349'.
https://github.com/harsh183/gh-chain/pull/2
  1. But I don't always want to be quick, sometimes i want to name my branch, have multiple commits and still have nice UX.
gh-chain (quick/20260622221349|✔) $ vim gh-chain
gh-chain (quick/20260622221349|✚1) $ git checkout -b hd/add_better_print
Switched to a new branch 'hd/add_better_print'
gh-chain (hd/add_better_print|✚1) $ git add .
gh-chain (hd/add_better_print|●1) $ git commit -m "3/x make a better print"
[hd/add_better_print fe4b60c] 3/x make a better print
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
gh-chain (hd/add_better_print|✔) $ gh chain
Stack base: quick/20260622221349
? Where should we push the 'hd/add_better_print' branch? harsh183/gh-chain

Creating pull request for hd/add_better_print into quick/20260622221349 in harsh183/gh-chain

? Title (required) 3/x make a better print
? Body <Received>
? What's next? Submit
remote:
remote:
To github.com:harsh183/gh-chain.git
 * [new branch]      HEAD -> hd/add_better_print
branch 'hd/add_better_print' set up to track 'origin/hd/add_better_print'.
https://github.com/harsh183/gh-chain/pull/3
  1. Then I did the same for this README.md once I was done
$ vim README.md
gh-chain (hd/add_better_print|✔) $ git status
On branch hd/add_better_print
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/hd/add_better_print'.

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
	README.md

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
gh-chain (hd/add_better_print|✔) $ gh chain quick "4/x Add a ReadMe for this"
Switched to a new branch 'quick/20260622223014'
[quick/20260622223014 0e6212d] 4/x Add a ReadMe for this
 1 file changed, 90 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 README.md
Stack base: hd/add_better_print
? Where should we push the 'quick/20260622223014' branch? harsh183/gh-chain

Creating pull request for quick/20260622223014 into hd/add_better_print in harsh183/gh-chain

? Title (required) 4/x Add a ReadMe for this
? Body <Received>
? What's next? Submit
remote:
remote:
To github.com:harsh183/gh-chain.git
 * [new branch]      HEAD -> quick/20260622223014
branch 'quick/20260622223014' set up to track 'origin/quick/20260622223014'.
https://github.com/harsh183/gh-chain/pull/4
  1. Now they showed up in the Pull Requests Tab
Screenshot 2026-06-22 at 10 30 47 PM
  1. I merged these in order using the GitHub UI with merge, squash, and rebase strategies and they all worked great. Make sure to manually or auto-delete a branch once merged for the base to automatically change like
Screenshot 2026-06-22 at 10 33 06 PM

Is this Serious?

Not very, this doesn't really handle many edge cases or more complex behavior you might want in a large organization, but it more or less hits the simple use case of stacking PRs using gh CLI without much work for my use cases. I think my main point is that the core of a stacking workflow is already there with tools we already have, even if it's a clunky execution.

If you're actually interested in this kind of stacking flow, I highly suggest trying out software and flows that's more meant for this:

  • Gerrit - Spun out of Google Android that uses standard git commands but your stacked change at git push origin HEAD:refs/for/<branch_name>
  • jj Jujutsu - Spun out of Google as well, and even has a git backend. Warning, this doesn't support git lfs, but I would have used this more otherwise since it captures how I think about changes.
  • sl Sapling - Based off Facebook era Phabricator-style stacking that's now open source. Warning, don't use it if you use sl for Steam Locomotive
  • git format-patch combined with git send-email - The original git workflow that's still used by Linux and many projects that shows how git has always been aligned with today's stacking workflow.
  • glab stack GitLab Stack - Gitlab's take on the same concept while still having the standard git semantics.
  • Graphite - New paid tool for Stack aware code review that works with GitHub and seems to have an interesting stack aware merge queue
  • hg Mercurial - Largely used by big tech companies maintaining various backends and extensions, has a lot of support of this kind of chained stacking model tthrough a few different ways.