GitHub Stacked PRs Are Generally Available

GitHub just made Graphite's core trick a checkbox on every github.com plan.

Stacked pull requests left public preview on 6 October 2026. You split a large change into a chain of focused PRs, review each layer, and merge them together. GitHub's own numbers from the preview: repos using stacks merged 9% more code than peers. Over two-thirds of the top 1% of repos now use stacks and saw a 5% faster time-to-merge. Treat vendor telemetry as directional. The product change is not.

Image: GitHub Changelog, Stacked pull requests generally available, 6 October 2026.

What actually got fixed for GA

Approvals stay on unchanged code when you rebase a stack after main moves, even in repos that dismiss stale reviews. Replacement commits from Rebase stack are signed, and so are the automatic rebases after a partial merge. Bypass permissions apply to the lowest unmerged PR in the stack. The merge queue now takes a stack as one group. Merge-commit method writes one merge commit per pull request, not one for the whole pile. If a stack's base branch disappears, GitHub retargets instead of closing the bottom PR. Auto-merge for a selected group rolls out over the next few weeks.

The PR header always shows stack context. Shift+J and Shift+K move between layers. Timeline events fire when a PR joins or leaves a stack, and the pull_request webhook gained a stacked action. The gh stack CLI extension grew worktrees plus faster init, checkout, and navigation. Copilot can drive the same loop with the gh-stack skill: init, add, submit, rebase --upstack.

Why this matters for agents

A single agent PR is a 2,000-line blob nobody wants to review. A stack is how you make the blob reviewable without pretending the agent is a senior engineer. GitHub's own tutorial now walks Copilot through an auth feature as layers. The warning in that doc is the one to tattoo on the team wiki: a mistake in the bottom layer infects every branch above it. Review the base before you ask the agent for the next floor.

GA is on all github.com plans. Enterprise Server gets it in a later release. If you are still rebasing stacks by hand with a third-party tool, the question is no longer whether GitHub has the primitive. It is whether your rulesets, signed-commit policy, and merge queue are ready for a group merge.

Sources

GitHub Changelog, Stacked pull requests generally available, 6 October 2026. https://github.blog/changelog/2026-10-06-stacked-pull-requests-generally-available/

GitHub Docs, Stack AI-generated code in pull requests. https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/tutorials/stack-ai-generated-code-in-pull-requests