Branches

Every change to your site’s code waits on a branch until it is merged: its pages, layouts, components, tables, stylesheet, language files, JavaScript files and import map. Merging is how any of it goes live, unless somebody with git access pushes straight to main. The Branches screen is where you look a branch over and decide.

The list shows every branch your site has besides the live site itself, the most recently changed first. Each row says how many changes the branch would put live, or that it has nothing new, whether it is behind the live site, and when it last changed and who changed it. The changes you make on Pages go on a branch called draft. A coding agent usually names its branch after the task, such as agent/opening-hours.

Look a branch over

Open a branch to see what it would change. It lists the branch’s commits, each with a short description of the change, and then every file it adds, changes or deletes, with the lines it adds in green and the lines it removes in red. Anything that went live after the branch started is left out, so it is never shown as the branch taking it away.

Above the commits, What changes says in plain sentences what the branch changes in what your site does, file by file, naming the block a sentence is about where there is one. When the files differ but nothing they do has changed, it says that instead. It is left out when the branch has an error, which a merge would name, or when it could not be worked out just then.

Preview opens the whole site as the branch has it, at the site’s preview address, through a private link. A form sent there keeps its entry with the branch and never reaches your tables (more on previews).

What merging does to your tables

Your tables are files of your site too, so a branch can change them, adding a field for example. When it does, the screen lists above the buttons what merging would do to your tables, one step at a time. A step that removes data or lets more people see it is marked Needs you: a coding agent cannot put it live, and Merge and go live on this screen approves exactly the list you see. The same button on the Pages banner doesn’t merge a branch that changes your tables at all: it brings you here to see the list first. When the list can’t be checked against your rows yet, or the change can’t go live as it is, the screen says so and merging won’t go through.

Scenarios

Your coding agent can write scenarios for your site: short scripted checks of what a visitor does and sees, kept as files under tests/. When a branch has them, the screen plays them on the branch and lists each one as passing or failing, with the line where it failed. Your agent can’t merge the branch until they all pass. You still can.

Merge and go live

Merge and go live puts everything on the branch live at once, and visitors see it straight away. The same button sits on the Pages banner while you are on the branch there. Everything the branch changes is checked again first, and if something on it would break the site, the merge is refused and the screen says why. A merge that goes through can still come with a warning beside its confirmation, which stops nothing.

Once it is merged, the branch is deleted. The next change you make on Pages starts a fresh draft.

A merge has no undo button. To take a change back, open the page’s history on Pages, restore the version you want, and merge that.

When the live site has moved on

If something else went live after a branch started, another branch being merged for example, the branch has to catch up before it can be merged. Update from the live site brings what went live into the branch. Check the preview again, then merge.

When the branch and the live site both changed the same file, updating stops and names the files rather than choosing between the two. Ask the agent that wrote the branch to update it: it can see both versions and decide which should win.

Delete a branch

Delete throws a branch away after you confirm. Nothing on it has gone live, so the live site does not change, and there is no undo.