gh-commandeer

Add commits to a contributor's pull request and push them back — without leaving the terminal.

When a contributor opens a PR from their fork, you can check out their branch, make changes, and push directly to their PR. The manual process requires several git commands and knowing where to find the fork URL. gh-commandeer handles all of that from a PR number alone.

Why commandeer a PR?

Fix minor issues without round-trips — The contributor's code is 95% right but has a typo, lint failure, or CI breakage. Rather than commenting and waiting for them to fix it, the maintainer just fixes it directly and merges.

Rebase onto current main — A PR goes stale because main has moved. The maintainer rebases the contributor's branch to resolve conflicts, since the contributor may be unavailable or unfamiliar with the rebase workflow.

Apply project style/conventions — The contribution works but doesn't follow local patterns. The maintainer normalizes it rather than blocking the PR with style comments.

Unblock a stalled PR — The contributor opened a good PR but went quiet (job change, vacation, lost interest). Rather than closing and reimplementing from scratch, the maintainer builds on the existing work.

Add tests or documentation — Maintainers often have standards the contributor didn't meet (e.g., "all PRs need tests"). Instead of rejection, the maintainer adds the missing pieces and ships it.

Resolve merge conflicts — In large repos, a contributor may not have the context to resolve conflicts correctly (e.g., they don't know which side of a conflicting migration is right). The maintainer handles it.

Note: The contributor must have Allow edits from maintainers enabled on the PR — GitHub enforces that you can only push to someone else's fork branch with their explicit permission.

Installation

As a gh extension (recommended)

gh extension install StevenACoffman/gh-commandeer

No token setup required — gh provides its own authentication automatically.

Invoke every command with gh commandeer instead of gh-commandeer:

gh commandeer <pr-number>             # check out the contributor's branch
# ... make your commits ...
gh commandeer push <pr-number>        # push back to their PR

To upgrade or remove the extension:

gh extension upgrade commandeer
gh extension remove commandeer

As a standalone binary

go install github.com/StevenACoffman/gh-commandeer@latest

Export a GitHub personal access token with repo scope:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_...

Run commands from inside the repository the PR targets (the one with origin pointing at GitHub).

Walkthrough

The examples below use gh commandeer (gh extension). Standalone binary users substitute gh-commandeer.

alice has opened PR #42 against your repository. Her changes are on the feature branch of her fork. You want to make a few commits and push them to her PR.

1. Check out the contributor's branch

gh commandeer 42

This adds Alice's fork as a remote, fetches it, checks out her branch, and sets its upstream tracking ref:

# equivalent to:
git remote add alice https://github.com/alice/repo.git
git fetch alice
git checkout -b alice/feature alice/feature
git branch --set-upstream-to=alice/feature alice/feature

You are now on a local branch alice/feature with alice set as its upstream. Make whatever commits you need.

Because the upstream is configured, the standard git commands work without extra arguments:

git status   # shows how far ahead/behind you are relative to alice/feature
git push     # pushes to alice's fork branch directly
git pull     # pulls from alice's fork branch directly

Note: If Alice's PR does not have Allow edits from maintainers enabled, gh commandeer will warn you. Alice needs to enable this on the PR before you can push.

2. Rebase (optional)

To place your commits on top of the current base branch before pushing:

git rebase origin/main

3. Push back to the PR

gh commandeer push

The PR number is remembered from step 1, so no argument is needed. If you rebased, add --force:

gh commandeer push --force

# equivalent to:
git push alice alice/feature:feature
git push --force alice alice/feature:feature  # after rebase or amend

Alice's PR now contains your commits.

4. Clean up (optional)

To remove the contributor's remote and clear the stored PR metadata:

gh commandeer restore

This undoes what step 1 did. The local branch is left in place — delete it manually if you no longer need it:

git branch -D alice/feature

Command reference

All flags marked as shared are inherited by every subcommand.

gh commandeer <pr-number>

Looks up the PR via the GitHub API, adds the contributor's fork as a remote named after their login, fetches it, and checks out their branch as <login>/<branch>.

Flag	Default	Description
--token	$GH_TOKEN, $GITHUB_TOKEN	GitHub personal access token
--owner	from origin remote	Repository owner (shared)
--repo	from origin remote	Repository name (shared)
--no-fetch	false	Skip fetching the remote (use if refs are already up to date)

gh commandeer push [<pr-number>]

Pushes the current branch to the contributor's fork, updating their PR. <pr-number> can be omitted if the branch was checked out with gh commandeer.

Flag	Default	Description
--force	false	Force-push (required after git rebase or git commit --amend)

gh commandeer status [<pr-number>]

Prints the PR title, contributor, branch names, maintainer-edit permission, fork URL, and PR URL — without making any changes. <pr-number> can be omitted if the branch was checked out with gh commandeer.

gh commandeer restore [<pr-number>]

Removes the contributor's fork remote and clears the stored PR number from .git/config. The local branch is left in place. <pr-number> can be omitted if the branch was checked out with gh commandeer.

gh commandeer version

Prints the version string.