Backport PR · vercel/next.js · Skills Docs

Skills

Skill 2 of 24

Backport PR

Backport a merged Next.js pull request from canary to a previous release branch such as next-16-2.

1 minute · 309 words · 4 sections

Install

$ npx skills add vercel/next.js --skill backport-pr

$ npx skills add vercel/next.js

» /plugin marketplace add vercel/next.js

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

Use this skill when a user asks to backport a merged Next.js PR to a release branch.

Inputs

Require a PR number and a target release branch, for example next-16-2.
If the target branch is not provided and cannot be inferred confidently from the user’s request, ask before mutating git state.
Treat the target branch as variable; do not hard-code next-16-2 except when the user explicitly asks for it.

Workflow

Inspect the current worktree before changing branches:
```
git status --short
git branch --show-current
```
Preserve unrelated user changes. Do not overwrite, reset, or stash them without the user’s consent.

Sync the source and target branches:

git fetch origin canary:refs/remotes/origin/canary <target-branch>:refs/remotes/origin/<target-branch>

Identify the commit that landed the PR on canary:
```
gh pr view <pr-number
```

PR Shape

Use a title like:

[backport] <original PR title>

Use a concise PR body:

Backports <original PR title/link> to `<target-branch>`.

<!-- NEXT_JS_LLM -->

$create-pr - Create the branch commit, push it, and open the draft PR.
$pr-status-triage - Check CI failures or review feedback after the PR exists.

About this skill

Trigger

Backport a merged Next.js pull request from canary to a previous release branch such as next-16-2. Use when the user asks to backport, cherry-pick, or open a backport PR from a PR number to an older Next.js version. Covers finding the merged PR commit, creating a backport branch from the target release branch, cherry-picking from canary, validating, and opening the PR with the release branch as the base.

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/vercel/next.js, branch canary, last pushed 28 August 2026.

Licence

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

Discovery

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

Authorship

6 of 24 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 the owner’s published design.md — hue 2°, 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 “Backport PR”, 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 .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Vercel, declaring 1 plugin. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Create the backport branch from the release branch:

git switch -c backport-<pr-number>-to-<target-branch> origin/<target-branch>

After switching branches in this repo, run pnpm build-all before Next.js integration tests unless the user explicitly limits the task to preparing the cherry-pick or PR.

Cherry-pick the landed commit with provenance:

git cherry-pick -x <merged-commit-sha>

Resolve conflicts in favor of preserving the release branch’s compatibility constraints. If the cherry-pick is empty, verify whether the change is already present on the release branch and report that instead of opening a duplicate PR.