Agent-Skills.md

Agent Skills: Incremental geometric repack — logarithmic pack layering + on-disk

Perform repository maintenance and cleanup

UncategorizedID: laurigates/claude-plugins/git-maintain

Repository

laurigates/claude-plugins
laurigatesLicense: MIT
234

Install this agent skill to your local

pnpm dlx add-skill https://github.com/laurigates/claude-plugins/tree/HEAD/git-plugin/skills/git-maintain

Skill Files

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git-plugin/skills/git-maintain/SKILL.md

Skill Metadata

Name
git-maintain
Description
"Repo maintenance — incremental repack, gc, branch pruning, stash cleanup, fsck. Use when asked to clean up the repo, run git maintenance/gc, delete merged branches, prune stashes, or shrink .git."

When to Use This Skill

| Use this skill when... | Use the alternative when... | |---|---| | Running git gc, repacking objects, or shrinking the .git directory | Use git-coworker-check first if other agents may be writing to the same checkout | | Pruning merged local branches and old stashes | Use git-cli-agentic for read-only branch/stash queries without mutating state | | Verifying repo integrity with git fsck | Use git-security-checks for secret scanning rather than object integrity | | Cleaning up a checkout before a long-lived feature branch goes stale | Use git-rebase-patterns to clean up commit history rather than the object store |

Context

  • Current branch: !git branch --show-current
  • Git status: !git status --porcelain=v2 --branch
  • Local branches: !git branch -vv --format='%(refname:short) %(upstream:short) %(upstream:track)'
  • Stash list: !git stash list
  • Repository size: !du -sh .git

Parameters

Parse these parameters from the command (all optional):

  • --prune: Remove unreachable objects and run an incremental geometric repack
  • --gc: Force a full git gc consolidation (only when a repo has degraded badly — prefer the incremental repack)
  • --background: Register the repo for hourly background maintenance (git maintenance start) instead of a blocking one-shot pass
  • --verify: Verify integrity of git objects
  • --branches: Clean up merged branches only
  • --stash: Clean up stashes only
  • --all: Run all maintenance tasks (default if no flags specified)

Your task

Perform repository maintenance and cleanup based on the flags provided.

Step 1: Check for accidentally committed files

  • Environment files, IDE files, dependencies, build artifacts, secrets
  • Suggest adding to .gitignore and removing with git rm --cached

Step 2: Update .gitignore

  • Suggest common patterns if missing
  • Offer to append missing patterns

Step 3: Delete merged branches (if --branches or --all)

  • List and clean branches merged via GitHub PR
  • Protect main, master, develop, staging, production
  • Delete local branches safely with git branch -d
  • Require user confirmation before deleting branches

Step 4: Clean up redundant stashes (if --stash or --all)

  • Show stash ages and context
  • Suggest cleanup for old stashes (>30 days)
  • Drop stashes from deleted branches
  • Require user confirmation before dropping stashes

Step 5: Repository optimization (if --prune, --gc, --background, or --all)

Prefer incremental maintenance over gc --aggressive. Modern Git (2.31+) replaced the blocking, rewrite-everything git gc --aggressive pass with git maintenance and geometric repacking, which organizes packfiles in logarithmic layers by object count. Geometric repacking is the default for manual maintenance in recent Git (2.52+) and avoids the destructive, time-consuming "all-in-one" repack. Default to it.

# Incremental geometric repack — logarithmic pack layering + on-disk
# multi-pack index; far cheaper than `gc --aggressive`, safe to run often
git repack --geometric=2 -d --write-midx

# Prune unreachable objects older than the default grace window
git prune --expire=2.weeks.ago

# Show size improvement
du -sh .git

For hands-off upkeep (--background), register the repo so Git quietly pre-fetches, optimizes the commit-graph, and repacks loose objects on a schedule instead of blocking on a manual pass:

# Register hourly background maintenance (one-time, per repo)
git maintenance start

# Or run the standard task set once, on demand (non-blocking, incremental)
git maintenance run --task=commit-graph --task=incremental-repack --task=loose-objects

Reserve a full git gc for a repo that has genuinely degraded (only with --gc); skip --aggressive unless a one-off deep repack is explicitly needed:

# Full consolidation — only when --gc is requested and the repo is degraded
git gc

Step 6: Verify repository integrity (if --verify or --all)

git fsck --full --strict

Report any issues found.

Step 7: Final summary

  • Report all actions taken
  • Show before/after metrics

Safe Operations

These operations are safe and non-destructive:

  • git repack --geometric=2 -d --write-midx - Incremental geometric repack (preferred)
  • git maintenance run / git maintenance start - Incremental background upkeep
  • git gc - Full garbage collection (reserve for degraded repos)
  • git prune - Prune unreachable objects
  • git fsck - Verify integrity

These require user confirmation:

  • git branch -d - Delete branches
  • git stash drop - Drop stashes

Agentic Optimizations

| Context | Command | |---------|---------| | Routine optimize | git repack --geometric=2 -d --write-midx | | Hands-off upkeep | git maintenance start | | One-shot incremental pass | git maintenance run --task=incremental-repack --task=commit-graph | | Integrity check | git fsck --full --strict | | Size before/after | du -sh .git |

See Also

  • git-branch-pr-workflow skill for branch management patterns