GitHub Announces Public Preview of Stacked Pull Requests

Release Date: July 30, 2026 $\bullet$ Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

GitHub has officially entered the public preview phase for Stacked Pull Requests. This feature is designed to dismantle the "monolithic PR" problem by dividing massive updates into a sequence of smaller, highly focused, and easily reviewable pull requests.

Essentially, a "stack" is an ordered chain of PRs where each one represents a specific layer of a larger architectural change.

Why Move to Stacks?

Traditionally, developers faced a binary choice: create one gigantic PR that intimidates reviewers, or manage multiple disparate branches that require constant, manual rebasing. Stacked PRs eliminate this friction.

Comparison: Traditional vs. Stacked Workflow

Core Advantages

• Parallel Velocity: Keep momentum by allowing teammates to review narrow scopes of work simultaneously.
• Rigorous Quality: Combine focused reviews with existing main branch protections to ensure stability.
• Flexible Integration: Choose to land the entire stack in one go or merge specific layers incrementally.
• Native Integration: Since this is built directly into GitHub, your current checks, requirements, and review processes remain intact.

"This removes so much friction (and the gh cli tools + agent skill help a ton)" — John Resig, creator of jQuery

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Getting Started

You can begin utilizing stacks via the terminal or the web interface. To get the CLI extension running, follow these steps:

Setup Checklist

• Install the GitHub CLI
• Run the extension installation command
• Create your first stack
• Add dependent layers

To install the necessary extension, use the following command in your terminal:

gh extension install github/gh-stack

The Workflow Logic

You can manage your stacks through github.com, the GitHub mobile app, the CLI, or via AI agents like GitHub Copilot (using the gh-stack skill).

Mathematically, the dependency of a stack can be viewed as: $PR_{n} \rightarrow PR_{n-1} \rightarrow \dots \rightarrow PR_{1} \rightarrow \text{main}$

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Reviewing and Merging

Independent Layer Review

When you open a PR within a stack, you only see the diff for that specific layer. To maintain context, GitHub provides a stack map at the top of the page, illustrating where the current PR fits into the broader project.

"AI has made TED’s developers dramatically more productive, but that created a new bottleneck: PRs were growing large enough that reviewers were struggling... Stacked PRs tighten our feedback loop and help get stable code to ted.com faster." — Andy Merryman, CTO, TED

One-Click Integration

Merging is now streamlined:

1. Full Merge: Merge the topmost ready PR to automatically land it and every unmerged layer beneath it in a single action.
2. Partial Merge: Merge lower layers individually; the PRs sitting above them will automatically rebase and retarget.

"A big change used to mean one giant PR nobody wanted to review. Now it’s a stack of small ones reviewers can actually follow... It stopped feeling like a tool on top of GitHub and started feeling like GitHub." — Mayank Saini, connectivity engineer, WHOOP

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Availability and Feedback

Current Status:

• Public Preview: Rolling out to all repositories over the next few days.
• Merge Queue Support: Deploying progressively over the coming weeks.

Next Steps:

• Consult the official stacked pull requests documentation.
• Join the conversation and provide input in the stacks discussion forum.

"It has helped us introduce smaller individual changes while shipping larger features, making it easier to review PRs." — Tim Neutkens, NextJS lead, Vercel