Branch merging

Merge a feature branch back into main with poly branch merge, including interactive and pre-defined conflict resolution.

poly branch merge is the CLI-native counterpart to merging in the Agent Studio web UI. It brings everything you’ve changed on the current branch back onto main, surfaces any conflicts in a structured table, and lets you resolve them either interactively or from a JSON file.

For the broader branching workflow (creating, switching, listing, deleting branches), see the poly branch section of the CLI reference. For the team-level guardrails around branching and merging, see Multi-user workflows and guardrails.

When to use it

You’ll typically reach for poly branch merge at the end of a feature loop:

1. Create a branch with poly branch create my-feature (see poly branch create).
2. Iterate locally, pushing with poly push (see Working locally).
3. Test with poly chat against the branch’s pushed state.
4. Merge back to main with poly branch merge '<message>' — described on this page.
5. Optionally deploy through Agent Studio.

You can also merge from the Agent Studio web UI by switching to the branch and clicking Merge. The CLI command and the UI hit the same platform endpoint, so the result is identical.

Basic usage

poly branch merge requires a merge message and merges the current branch into main. Switch to the source branch first if you aren’t on it.

poly branch switch my-feature
poly branch merge 'Merge my-feature into main'

If the merge has no conflicts, the branch is merged immediately and the CLI automatically switches your local checkout to main. Run poly pull afterwards if you need to refresh local state.

Argument	Required	Description
message	yes	Merge commit message. Quote it if it contains spaces.
--interactive, -i	no	Resolve conflicts in an interactive prompt.
--resolutions <source>	no	Pre-defined resolutions as a JSON file path, inline JSON string, or - for stdin.
--path <dir>	no	Project base path. Defaults to the current working directory.
--json	no	Print a single JSON object on stdout (machine-readable).
--verbose	no	Show full error tracebacks for debugging.

Conflicts

If the merge has conflicts, the command prints a conflict table and exits with a non-zero status code. The table shows, for each conflicting field:

• Path — the resource and field that conflicts (for example topics > Booking > content)
• Base / Ours / Theirs — the original value and the two competing values
• Auto-merged value — what the ADK would produce by line-merging the two sides
• Auto-mergeable — whether the auto-merged value contains any unresolved markers

If every conflict is auto-mergeable and you want to accept the auto-merge, re-run the command with --interactive and accept the suggestions, or pre-populate --resolutions with the auto-merge values.

--interactive / -i

Interactive mode walks you through each conflict and asks how to resolve it. For every conflict you can:

• accept the auto-merge (when available)
• pick main (ours)
• pick branch (theirs)
• pick base (revert to the original value)
• open the value in your $EDITOR or $VISUAL for free-form editing

After you’ve answered every conflict the merge is re-attempted automatically.

Set $EDITOR or $VISUAL before starting an interactive merge

Interactive mode shells out to your editor for multiline or long values. If neither variable is set it falls back to vi. Setting EDITOR=code --wait (or your editor of choice) in your shell profile makes the experience much smoother.

--resolutions <source>

Use --resolutions to supply pre-defined resolutions non-interactively. The source can be:

• a path to a JSON file
• a literal JSON string
• - to read JSON from stdin

If the resolutions cover every conflict the merge proceeds without prompting. Combine --resolutions with --interactive to seed an interactive session — pre-defined choices are applied automatically and you’ll only be prompted for the conflicts they don’t cover.

Resolution file format

--resolutions expects a JSON array of objects:

[
  {
    "path": ["topics", "Booking", "content"],
    "strategy": "theirs"
  },
  {
    "path": ["agent_settings", "rules", "value"],
    "strategy": "theirs",
    "value": "Custom resolved content here"
  },
  {
    "path": ["flows", "main_flow", "steps", "greet", "prompt"],
    "strategy": "ours"
  }
]

Field	Description
path	List of strings identifying the conflicted field. Match the Path column from the conflict table.
strategy	One of "ours" (keep main), "theirs" (keep branch), or "base" (revert to the original).
value	Optional custom value. Only honored with the "theirs" strategy.

You can capture the structure of a resolution file by running poly branch merge once to surface the conflicts, then writing a JSON file that addresses each path row.

After a successful merge

• The CLI switches your local checkout to main.
• Run poly pull if you need to refresh local state to match the post-merge main.
• Run poly chat against main (which falls back to the sandbox environment) to smoke-test the merged result.
• If you’re ready to ship, follow up with poly deployments to promote the merged state to a live environment.

Merging through the Agent Studio web UI

You can also merge through the Agent Studio interface:

1. Open the project in Agent Studio.
2. Switch to the branch.
3. Click Merge.

The web UI surfaces the same conflicts as the CLI and lets you resolve them in the browser. Use whichever path fits your workflow — they hit the same platform endpoint, so there is no functional difference between them.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Merge message is required	You ran poly branch merge with no message argument.	Pass a quoted message: poly branch merge 'Describe the merge'.
Conflict table appears and the command exits non-zero	One or more fields conflict between branch and main.	Re-run with --interactive or supply --resolutions.
[Errno 22] Invalid argument during interactive prompt	The shell isn’t a TTY (CI, scripts, non-interactive containers).	Run interactively, or use --resolutions with a pre-built JSON file.
Editor doesn’t open in interactive mode	$EDITOR and $VISUAL are unset.	Export one of them before running the merge.
Local changes block the merge	You have unpushed work on the source branch.	Run poly push first, or poly revert to discard.

Related references

Tests

Validate agent behavior with conversation tests before merging.

Tooling

IDE extensions and AI coding tools that integrate with the ADK workflow.

Multi-user workflows and guardrails

How branches, merges, and validation interact across a team.