0x04Harden

Dependency PR triage

Use this when automated dependency pull requests have piled up and need clearing safely, without stale check results, parallel merge races, or an agent quietly taking a major version.

Done when

Every pull request in the frozen list reaches a final status backed by current evidence.

Each one is merged, repaired, deferred for a human decision, or blocked — each supported by the diff, release notes, advisory and a test run against the head that was actually merged, with every merge performed against a freshly fetched base.

The cycle

  1. 01Freeze the list of open dependency pull requests; later arrivals wait for the next pass.
  2. 02For each, read the diff, release notes, advisory and dependency role, and verify CI against its exact head.
  3. 03Re-run the project’s tests in a clean worktree and classify risk from that evidence.
  4. 04Repair failures with the smallest verified fix, or record why none is safe.
  5. 05Merge one at a time against a freshly fetched base, escalating anything major, breaking or uncertain.

repeat from 01 while the evidence improves

Why it holds

The danger in bulk dependency work is not the individual upgrade, it is the shortcuts: trusting a green check from an older commit, merging several at once so no single change can be blamed, and treating blanket permission as permission for anything. Freezing the queue, verifying against the exact head, and merging one at a time removes all three without slowing the routine cases down.

Prompt

Work only inside [repository], and only within the authority you have actually been given. List the open automated dependency pull requests and freeze that list. Anything opened after this point belongs to the next pass, not this one. Handle each entry exactly once. For each: read the diff, the upstream release notes, any linked advisory, and where the package sits — build-time, runtime, or transitive. Check CI against the pull request’s current head rather than a cached result, and re-run the project’s own tests in a clean worktree. A passing badge from an earlier commit is not evidence about the code in front of you. Classify from that evidence: how large the version change is, whether behaviour breaks, whether it closes a security advisory, and how much of the project it can affect. Where checks fail, find the cause and prepare the smallest repair that makes them pass, or record why no safe repair exists. Merge serially, never in parallel. Immediately before each merge, refetch the base branch and the pull request head and require checks passing on that exact head — a queue that was green ten minutes ago is not evidence now. Merge only patch or minor updates you have classified as low risk, and only where merge authority was granted in advance. Escalate instead of proceeding for major versions, breaking changes, security-sensitive packages, anything you are unsure about, and anything visible outside the repository. Do not push, merge, comment, or notify anyone without the specific authority to do it. Finish when every pull request in the frozen list has a final status. Finish immediately if there were none. Finish as blocked if you cannot verify, naming what was unavailable. Report each pull request as merged, repaired, deferred, or blocked, with the evidence behind the call.

  • Local rulesclean
  • Trivyclean
  • Cisco AI Defense Skill Scannerclean

    1 informational

  • NVIDIA SkillSpectorclean

    score 0/100 · safe