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Lifecycle Management

Worktree lifecycle can be as simple or structured as your workflow requires.

Basic Lifecycle

The minimal pattern:

CREATE → USE → CLEANUP

Create a worktree, do the work, remove it when done. No tracking, no gates. Isolation.

Safety Verification

Adding checkpoints prevents common problems:

Pre-work baseline: Run tests before making changes to distinguish pre-existing failures from your changes. If possible find a way to persist the result of this to help ground the agent.

Show the diff to the user before committing. This prevents accidental inclusion of unintended changes.

Pre-merge confirmation: Ask before merging. The user decides what lands on main.

User Approval Gates

Agents operating in worktrees should not make permanent changes without user consent:

  1. Implementation complete
  2. Show diff summary and proposed commit message
  3. User decides: approve, review more, or modify
  4. Only commit after explicit approval

This pattern applies to merges too. Agents propose changes and users approve them.

Structured Workflows

For teams needing more rigor, lifecycle can be formalized:

  • Phase tracking: know whether a worktree is in setup, development, or review
  • Edit guards: Only allow file modifications during active development
  • Require tests to pass before requesting review
  • Audit trails: Record timestamps and state transitions for compliance

The right level of structure depends on context. Personal projects need less ceremony than enterprise compliance environments.

Choosing Complexity

Need Approach
Personal projects Basic lifecycle
Team development Add safety verification
Compliance requirements Add audit trails
Multi-service projects Add service coordination

Start simple. Add formality when problems justify the overhead.