Nonlinear Work

This skill supports sibling commits and unrelated work. Do not force everything onto the current stack if the work is logically independent.

Tested with jj 0.41.0

When to Start a Sibling from `trunk()`

Use a fresh sibling when:

@ already represents one logical change and the new work is unrelated
the user wants multiple independent lines of work
you need to compare or merge two alternative implementations
a quick fix appears while a feature change is already in progress

Preferred Flow

This skill keeps the local "describe first" rule, even for sibling work:

jj st
jj new trunk()
jj desc -m "fix: handle stale workspace recovery"
# make changes
jj st

Use trunk() instead of guessing main or master. If the new work should build on the current change, use plain jj new instead of jj new trunk().

Child vs Sibling

Use a child (jj new) when:

the new work depends on the current change
the user wants a stacked sequence
the current commit is intentionally being split into follow-up commits

Use a sibling from trunk() when:

the work should review, land, or be abandoned independently
you are branching off to do an unrelated fix, doc change, or experiment
parallel agents need clearly separated lines of history

Merge-Shaped Work

If two independently meaningful lines of work should remain visible as a merge, create an explicit merge commit:

jj new <left-change> <right-change> -m "merge: combine related lines of work"

Ask the user before choosing between:

rebasing one line onto the other
keeping a visible merge
pushing each line separately

Anti-Patterns

Do not keep piling unrelated work into the current @ just because it is convenient.
Do not adopt a describe -> code -> jj new -> repeat loop. In this skill, jj new starts the next change; it does not close the current one.
Do not default to jj new trunk() --no-edit -m ... here. Keep the local sequence: choose the base first, then run jj desc -m ....
Do not hardcode main or master when trunk() expresses the intent.

See references/NEW_CHANGE.md for the default change-starting workflow and references/WORKSPACES.md for multi-workspace parallelism.

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