April 13, 2026
Code Jenga, anyone?
GitHub Stacked PRs
GitHub’s new “stacked” changes drop and the comments explode
TLDR: GitHub added layered change reviews you can merge in one click, plus a new tool and AI tie‑in. Devs are split between cheering the workflow upgrade, roasting it as “just commits with extra steps,” and demanding multi‑project support while comparing it to GitLab’s take—making this a big usability win with big expectations.
GitHub just rolled out Stacked PRs—think code changes arranged like neat layers you can review one by one and then merge in one click. There’s a slick UI to hop between layers, a “cascading rebase” button to tidy the whole stack, a new gh stack command-line tool, and even AI hookup so you can teach your coding bot to stack changes for you. For non‑coders: a pull request is a proposed change; stacking is breaking big changes into small steps.
And the crowd? Pure drama. One camp shouted “Finally!” as fans of older tools like Phabricator and Gerrit claimed this is how code reviews should have always worked. Another camp fired snark cannons, with one commenter joking that GitHub just reinvented… commits. Meanwhile, practical folks immediately asked for multi‑repo support; one dev said they juggle “10 or 20” changes across several projects and want them merged in order. Others compared it to GitLab’s version, noting it feels more like parity than a revolution, dropping links to GitLab’s stacked diffs.
So is it code Jenga done right or a shiny wrapper on an old idea? The takes are stacked higher than the features themselves—and that’s saying something.
Key Points
- •GitHub adds native support for Stacked PRs to organize related changes into ordered layers.
- •Each PR in a stack is reviewed independently but can be merged together with one click.
- •The GitHub UI lets users navigate PRs in a stack, view status, and trigger a cascading rebase across the stack.
- •The gh stack CLI enables creating stacks, cascading rebases, pushing branches, creating PRs, and navigating layers from the terminal.
- •AI integration is available via “npx skills add github/gh-stack” to teach AI coding agents to work with stacked workflows.