GitHub Ships Stacked Pull Requests in Public Preview

GitHub has launched native support for stacked pull requests, a workflow that splits one large change into an ordered chain of smaller PRs, each targeting the layer beneath it. Reviewers can approve individual layers in parallel rather than wading through a single sprawling diff, and the whole stack—or just its lower layers—can be merged in one action. When part of a stack lands, the PRs above it automatically rebase and retarget. Because the feature is built into the platform, existing branch protections, required checks, and merge-queue rules apply without extra configuration.

Stacks can be created and managed from the web, the mobile app, a new gh-stack CLI extension, or through a coding agent like Copilot via a dedicated skill. GitHub is pitching the feature partly as an answer to a problem it helped create: teams cited in the announcement, including TED and Vercel, note that AI-assisted coding has pushed PR sizes up to the point where review quality suffers, and dependency-ordered stacks restore smaller, more digestible review units.

The preview is rolling out to all repositories over the coming days, with merge-queue support for stacks arriving progressively over the following weeks. It’s a notable convergence of tooling that previously required third-party utilities (Graphite, git-branchless, and similar) directly into GitHub’s core review flow.