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dependabot skill: [dependabot skip] discards extra commits, it doesn't rebase over them

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Assessment

Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Newbie friendliness
85/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
github, markdown
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Read the “Rebase Strategy” section in skills/dependabot/SKILL.md around line 384 and the Dependabot commands in skills/dependabot/references/pr-commands.md around line 87; compare their wording with the already-correct explanation in references/dependabot-yml-reference.md around line 311. Update both descriptions to make clear that the marker permits a force-push that discards extra commits; done when both passages match that behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

The dependabot skill describes the [dependabot skip] commit-message marker in a way that inverts its effect.

Where (current main, 98b45a7):

  • skills/dependabot/SKILL.md:384, under "Rebase Strategy": "Allow rebase over extra commits by including [dependabot skip] in commit messages."
  • skills/dependabot/references/pr-commands.md:87: "If you've pushed commits to a Dependabot branch and want Dependabot to rebase over them, include [dependabot skip] in your commit message."

What GitHub documents (Managing pull requests for dependency updates):

By default, Dependabot will stop rebasing a pull request once extra commits have been pushed to it. To allow Dependabot to force push over commits added to its branches, include any of the following strings: [dependabot skip], [skip dependabot], [dependabot-skip], or [skip-dependabot] … to the commit message.

So the marker does not make Dependabot replay ("rebase over") your commits. It lets Dependabot force-push over the branch and discard them. "Rebase over" reads naturally as "keep my commit on top", which is the opposite of what happens. An agent following the skill will add the marker to a commit it wants to keep, such as a formatter reformat that a dependency bump needs, and the next automatic rebase silently drops it. references/dependabot-yml-reference.md:311 in the same skill already says it correctly ("force push over extra commits").

Suggested wording

SKILL.md:384:

Dependabot stops rebasing a PR once anyone else pushes a commit to its branch. A [dependabot skip] in that commit's message lets it rebase anyway by force-pushing over the branch, which discards the commit. Leave the marker out to keep your commit.

references/pr-commands.md:87:

  • Force push over extra commits: Dependabot stops rebasing once you push commits to its branch. Include [dependabot skip] in your commit message to let it rebase anyway; its next rebase force-pushes over the branch and discards your commits.

Happy to open a PR with these two lines if that's easier.

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