Skills

Skill 86 of 200

Conventional Branch

Create Git branches following the Conventional Branch specification (feature/, bugfix/, hotfix/, release/, chore/).

1 minute · 324 words · 9 sections

Install

$ npx skills add github/awesome-copilot --skill conventional-branch

$ npx skills add github/awesome-copilot

» /plugin marketplace add github/awesome-copilot

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Create Git branches that follow the Conventional Branch (opens in a new tab) specification — a simple, consistent convention for naming Git branches.

Branch Name Format

<type>/<description>

Branch Types

Type	Alias	Purpose
`feature/`	`feat/`	New features or enhancements
`bugfix/`	`fix/`	Bug fixes
`hotfix/`	—	Urgent production fixes
`release/`	—	Release preparation (dots allowed in version: `release/v1.2.0`)
`chore/`	—	Non-code tasks (deps, docs, config)

Trunk Branches

main, master, and develop are trunk branches — they do not use a prefix. Never create new branches with the same names as trunk branches; branch off them instead.

Naming Rules

Lowercase only — no uppercase letters anywhere
Alphanumerics, hyphens, and dots — a-z, 0-9, -, .
Dots allowed only in release/ version descriptions (e.g., release/v1.2.0)
No underscores, spaces, or special characters
No consecutive hyphens (--), dots (..), or hyphen-dot adjacency (-. or .-)
No leading or trailing hyphens or dots in the description

Valid Examples

main
master
develop
feature/add-login-page
feat/add-login-page
bugfix/fix-header-bug
fix/header-bug
hotfix/security-patch
release/v1.2.0
chore/update-dependencies
feature/issue-123-new-login

Invalid Examples

Branch	Problem
`Feature/Add-Login`	Uppercase letters
`feature/new--login`	Consecutive hyphens
`feature/-new-login`	Leading hyphen
`feature/new-login-`	Trailing hyphen
`release/v1.-2.0`	Hyphen adjacent to dot
`fix/header bug`	Space
`fix/header_bug`	Underscore
`unknown/some-task`	Unknown prefix type

Description Guidelines

Use kebab-case with 2-5 words
Be descriptive but concise (~50 chars total)
Good: add-oauth-login, fix-header-overflow, update-ci-config
Bad: fix-bug, new-feature

Workflow

Follow these steps:

Step 1 — Determine Branch Type

Ask the user (if not already clear):

Branch type — default to feature when uncertain
Brief description — what the branch is for

If the user mentions a ticket or issue number, include it in the description (e.g., feature/issue-123-add-oauth).

Step 2 — Validate the Name

Check the assembled name against the Naming Rules above. If any rule fails, fix it:

Lowercase everything
Replace underscores and spaces with hyphens
Collapse consecutive hyphens
Strip leading/trailing hyphens

Step 3 — Detect the Base Branch

Different repos use different trunk branches. Detect which one this repo uses:

# Prefer the remote's default branch
git symbolic-ref --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed 's|^origin/||'

If that returns nothing, check which trunk branch exists locally (priority order: develop, main, master):

for b in develop main master; do
  git show-ref --verify --quiet "refs/heads/$b" && echo "$b" && break
done

Step 4 — Create and Checkout

git checkout <base>
git pull origin <base>
git checkout -b <type>/<description>

Step 5 — Confirm

Tell the user:

The branch name that was created
That they are now on the new branch
Remind them: git push -u origin <branch-name> when ready

Relationship with Conventional Commits

Conventional Branch complements Conventional Commits (opens in a new tab):

Conventional Branch	Typical Conventional Commit
`feature/add-login`	`feat: add login page`
`bugfix/fix-header`	`fix: header overflow on mobile`
`chore/update-deps`	`chore: bump lodash to 5.0`
`release/v1.2.0`	`chore: release v1.2.0`

Align the branch type with commit types where possible (e.g., feature/* branches with feat: commits).

About this skill

Trigger

Create Git branches following the Conventional Branch specification (feature/, bugfix/, hotfix/, release/, chore/). Use when creating a new branch, naming a branch, or checking whether a branch name complies with the spec.

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/github/awesome-copilot, branch main, last pushed 24 September 2026.

Licence

MIT — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

200 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 2 distinct layouts observed: .github/skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/*/SKILL.md.

Authorship

3 of 200 skills are installed into the repository rather than published from it. They are shelved in the closing “Credited skills” part and remain the work of their own authors. A skill counts as credited when its only copy lives under one agent’s dot directory; visible directories, per-agent mirror sets, and skills installable from this repository on skills.sh all count as published.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 295°, chroma 0.190. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Removed “Conventional Branch”, a leading h1 that duplicated the skill title.

Spec compliance

Every skill satisfies the Agent Skills specification’s frontmatter rules.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .github/plugin/marketplace.json by GitHub, declaring 162 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /github/awesome-copilot.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Create Git branches that follow the Conventional Branch (opens in a new tab) specification — a simple, consistent convention for naming Git branches.

Branch Name Format

<type>/<description>

Branch Types

Type	Alias	Purpose
`feature/`	`feat/`	New features or enhancements
`bugfix/`	`fix/`	Bug fixes
`hotfix/`	—	Urgent production fixes
`release/`	—	Release preparation (dots allowed in version: `release/v1.2.0`)
`chore/`	—	Non-code tasks (deps, docs, config)

Trunk Branches

main, master, and develop are trunk branches — they do not use a prefix. Never create new branches with the same names as trunk branches; branch off them instead.

Naming Rules

Lowercase only — no uppercase letters anywhere
Alphanumerics, hyphens, and dots — a-z, 0-9, -, .
Dots allowed only in release/ version descriptions (e.g., release/v1.2.0)
No underscores, spaces, or special characters
No consecutive hyphens (--), dots (..), or hyphen-dot adjacency (-. or .-)
No leading or trailing hyphens or dots in the description

Valid Examples

main
master
develop
feature/add-login-page
feat/add-login-page
bugfix/fix-header-bug
fix/header-bug
hotfix/security-patch
release/v1.2.0
chore/update-dependencies
feature/issue-123-new-login

Invalid Examples

Branch	Problem
`Feature/Add-Login`	Uppercase letters
`feature/new--login`	Consecutive hyphens
`feature/-new-login`	Leading hyphen
`feature/new-login-`	Trailing hyphen
`release/v1.-2.0`	Hyphen adjacent to dot
`fix/header bug`	Space
`fix/header_bug`	Underscore
`unknown/some-task`	Unknown prefix type

Description Guidelines

Use kebab-case with 2-5 words
Be descriptive but concise (~50 chars total)
Good: add-oauth-login, fix-header-overflow, update-ci-config
Bad: fix-bug, new-feature

Workflow

Follow these steps:

Step 1 — Determine Branch Type

Ask the user (if not already clear):

Branch type — default to feature when uncertain
Brief description — what the branch is for

If the user mentions a ticket or issue number, include it in the description (e.g., feature/issue-123-add-oauth).

Step 2 — Validate the Name

Check the assembled name against the Naming Rules above. If any rule fails, fix it:

Lowercase everything
Replace underscores and spaces with hyphens
Collapse consecutive hyphens
Strip leading/trailing hyphens

Step 3 — Detect the Base Branch

Different repos use different trunk branches. Detect which one this repo uses:

# Prefer the remote's default branch
git symbolic-ref --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed 's|^origin/||'

If that returns nothing, check which trunk branch exists locally (priority order: develop, main, master):

for b in develop main master; do
  git show-ref --verify --quiet "refs/heads/$b" && echo "$b" && break
done

Step 4 — Create and Checkout

git checkout <base>
git pull origin <base>
git checkout -b <type>/<description>

Step 5 — Confirm

Tell the user:

The branch name that was created
That they are now on the new branch
Remind them: git push -u origin <branch-name> when ready

Relationship with Conventional Commits

Conventional Branch complements Conventional Commits (opens in a new tab):

Conventional Branch	Typical Conventional Commit
`feature/add-login`	`feat: add login page`
`bugfix/fix-header`	`fix: header overflow on mobile`
`chore/update-deps`	`chore: bump lodash to 5.0`
`release/v1.2.0`	`chore: release v1.2.0`

Align the branch type with commit types where possible (e.g., feature/* branches with feat: commits).