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Branch Protection Rules Plan for Your Repository

Table output Has example

Plan branch protection rules for main and release branches, balancing review requirements, status checks and speed, with a rollout order.

The Open buttons send the prompt text as currently shown below to that site only when you click. Fill in the placeholders first.

[VERIFY] is an editorial flag, not a blank to fill. Wherever the prompt shows [VERIFY], check that item against a reliable source before you use it.

Help me design a branch protection plan for a GitHub repository. Team size: [TEAM_SIZE]. Branches to protect: [PROTECTED_BRANCHES]. Our CI checks by name: [CI_CHECK_NAMES]. How often we release: [RELEASE_CADENCE]. Our biggest pain today: [CURRENT_PAIN_POINT]. Current admin or bypass habits: [BYPASS_HABITS].

Produce a table with the columns Rule, Recommended setting, Why it matters, Cost to the team (1 to 5 where 5 is most friction), and Rollout week. Cover required reviews, dismissing stale approvals, required status checks, requiring branches to be up to date, signed commits, linear history, force push and deletion rules, and who may bypass. Then give me a three-stage rollout order that starts with the lowest friction rules, and a short note for the team announcing each stage. End with a section called Exceptions and escape hatches that explains how to handle an urgent hotfix without disabling protection for good.

Menu names, setting names and plan limits differ between GitHub plans and between branch rulesets and classic branch protection, so flag each setting you mention with [VERIFY] and tell me to check my plan. Be honest about trade-offs; do not claim a setting prevents all bad merges. This is engineering process guidance, not a compliance certification.

Add a worked example with invented figures: a team of 6 with a main branch and 2 CI checks, where 1 required review costs a typical pull request about 4 hours of waiting. Show how you would weigh adding a second review against that cost.

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Replace each bracketed placeholder with your own details, then paste into Any AI or another assistant.

Rule | Recommended | Why | Friction | Week
Require pull request before merge | On for main | Stops direct pushes that skip CI | 2 | 1
Required approvals | 1 | Second pair of eyes at modest cost | 3 | 1
Dismiss stale approvals | On | A late change should not ride an old approval | 2 | 2
Required checks: build, test | On | Keeps main green [VERIFY] | 2 | 2
Require up-to-date branch | Off at first | Adds rebases and waiting for a team of 6 | 4 | 4
Force pushes | Blocked | Protects shared history | 1 | 1

Arithmetic: 1 review at about 4 hours of waiting per pull request. A second review would roughly double the queue for small changes, so start with 1 and revisit after a month.

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