submit

jjpr submit is the manual control point. It pushes bookmarks and creates or updates PRs on the forge. Use it when you don’t want the watch loop, or when you’re debugging.

jjpr submit                           # push and update everything in the stack
jjpr submit --reviewer alice,bob      # request reviewers on the bottom PR (default scope)
jjpr submit --reviewer alice --reviewer-scope all   # request on every PR
jjpr submit --reviewer alice --reviewer-scope leaf  # request on the topmost PR
jjpr submit --draft                   # create new PRs as drafts
jjpr submit --ready                   # mark existing draft PRs as ready
jjpr submit --base coworker-feat      # override auto-detected base branch

What it does

1. Pushes all bookmarks in the stack to the remote.
2. Creates PRs for bookmarks that don’t have one yet.
3. Updates PR base branches to maintain the stack structure.
4. Updates PR bodies when commit descriptions have changed.
5. Adds or updates the stack-awareness comment on multi-PR stacks. Single-PR stacks don’t get a comment, so they look like a normal PR to reviewers.

Submit is idempotent. Run it as often as you want. After rebasing, editing commit messages, or restacking with jj rebase, re-run jjpr submit. It pushes the new commits, fixes PR base branches, and syncs descriptions. If everything is already up to date, it reports “Stack is up to date.”

When no bookmark is specified, jjpr infers the target from the working copy’s position. It finds which stack overlaps trunk()..@ and submits up to the topmost bookmark.

If pushing new commits to an already-approved PR whose base resets approvals on push (GitHub’s “dismiss stale reviews”, GitLab’s “reset approvals on push”, Forgejo’s “dismiss stale approvals”), jjpr reports the approvals the push dropped so the loss isn’t silent:

  Pushing 'auth'...
    https://github.com/o/r/pull/42
    ⚠ dismissed 1 approval on #42 — base 'main' resets approvals on push

Flags

PR titles and bodies

Title and body come from the first commit’s description in each bookmark’s segment. A trailing block of git trailers (Co-authored-by:, Signed-off-by:, and similar) is stripped from the body so commit attribution doesn’t show up as the PR description.

The body is wrapped in HTML comment markers. Text you add above or below the markers (screenshots, notes, test plans) is always preserved.

When you re-submit, jjpr reconciles the managed section between the markers against the commit message. It records a fingerprint of whatever it last wrote there, which lets it tell two situations apart:

• You changed the commit message, so the PR is stale. jjpr updates the managed section.
• You edited the text between the markers directly on the forge. jjpr leaves it alone.

If both the commit message and the on-forge text changed since jjpr last wrote them, jjpr can’t tell which you meant to keep, so it leaves the PR untouched rather than overwrite your edit and prints a note telling you so. To make the change take, edit the commit message (the source of truth for the managed section).

PRs created before fingerprinting get a fingerprint recorded on the next submit. A pre-fingerprint PR whose managed text was hand-edited away from its commit message is left untouched, never overwritten.

If you remove the markers from the PR body entirely, jjpr stops updating that PR’s description.

The PR title is not automatically updated after creation. If you change the commit’s first line, jjpr warns you about the drift.

Drafts

--draft creates new PRs as drafts. Existing PRs are unaffected.

--ready converts every draft PR in the stack to ready-for-review.

The two flags are mutually exclusive.

Reviewers

--reviewer alice,bob requests reviewers. By default the request lands only on the bottom PR (the one closest to your default branch), because that’s where review attention is needed first in a stack. As the bottom merges, the next iteration of submit (or watch) targets whichever PR is now lowest. --reviewer-scope leaf requests on the topmost PR; --reviewer-scope all requests on every PR.

In 0.20.x and earlier, requests went to every PR by default. If you relied on that, pass --reviewer-scope all explicitly.

Idempotent: a reviewer who’s already on a PR isn’t re-requested.

Stacking on someone else’s branch

If a commit in your stack’s ancestry has a remote bookmark that isn’t one of your own, jjpr treats it as a foreign base and targets your first PR at that branch instead of the default branch (e.g., main). The status output reflects this:

  auth (1 change, PR open, push up to date)
    https://github.com/o/r/pull/42
  profile (1 change, not pushed yet)
    no PR yet — run `jjpr submit`
  (based on coworker-feat)

Use --base <branch> to override auto-detection. Useful when the coworker hasn’t pushed yet.

Conflict check

Before pushing, jjpr checks for unresolved conflicts in the stack. Conflicts halt the operation:

Error: cannot push — some commits have unresolved conflicts:

  pnnmmvmu (feat/deferment-roles): add Billings::DueDatePolicy specs

To resolve: jj edit pnnmmvmu, fix the conflicts, then re-run jjpr submit.

Divergent changes

A change is divergent when two commits carry the same change ID — usually the result of two processes rewriting the same change concurrently. jj marks these ??.

If both copies are in the stack you are submitting, jjpr stops before pushing anything:

Error: Refusing to submit: this stack contains a divergent change.

  change qkpwpsrsmuto is on 2 commits: 8bf5f5f34cfe, f24f394275ab
    bookmarks: feat-b, feat-a

jjpr will not publish both copies as separate pull requests. Resolve the
divergence first — `jj abandon <commit>` to drop one, or `jj duplicate` to
give it its own change id — then re-run.

Nothing has been pushed.

The two copies are genuinely different commits, so publishing them would mean two pull requests for what you still have as one unresolved change — and a created PR notifies reviewers and is awkward to retract. jjpr merge already refuses on divergence; submit and jjpr watch behave the same way.

The check is scoped to the stack being submitted. A divergent change elsewhere in the repository does not block you.

jjpr status marks the segment that carries it, so you can see which one to resolve.

Reshaping a native stack

If your PRs are registered as a GitHub native stack (with gh stack submit or from the web UI), most of submit works normally. Pushing rewritten commits is fine: the stack follows each branch’s new head. Creating PRs, updating descriptions, and stack comments all work.

The exception is retargeting. GitHub rejects a base change on any PR that belongs to a stack, even a change to the base it already has. jjpr only needs to retarget when the stack’s shape changes, so amending commits and re-pushing is unaffected. Reordering, inserting, or dropping a bookmark is not.

jjpr checks this before pushing anything and stops:

Error: the stack's shape changed, but its PRs are in a GitHub native stack.

  #239 ('sub0730-c') needs its base moved from 'sub0730-b' to 'sub0730-a'

GitHub does not allow retargeting a PR that belongs to a stack, so jjpr cannot
apply that. Nothing has been pushed.

To continue, dissolve the native stack and let jjpr manage the bases:
  gh stack unstack 240
  jjpr submit

Or keep the native stack and restructure it with gh instead:
  gh stack unstack 240 && gh stack init <branches in the new order>

The check runs in --dry-run too. A dry run reports the refusal rather than printing a base update that could not succeed.

Stack-awareness comment

Multi-PR stacks get a comment on every PR linking the others:

This PR is part of a stack:

1. [`feat/auth`](https://github.com/o/r/pull/41)
1. **`feat/profile` <-- this PR**
1. [`feat/settings`](https://github.com/o/r/pull/43)

The list always reflects the current local stack in base-to-top order. As you rebase, split, or reorder commits, the order is recomputed every submit so each PR’s comment stays in sync with the others.

When a PR in the stack is merged or closed and its bookmark is no longer in the local graph, it moves into a collapsible history block at the bottom of the comment, rendered with strikethrough:

1. **`feat/profile` <-- this PR**
1. [`feat/settings`](https://github.com/o/r/pull/43)

<details><summary>2 earlier closed/merged PRs</summary>

1. ~~[`feat/foundation`](https://github.com/o/r/pull/39)~~
1. ~~[`feat/migration`](https://github.com/o/r/pull/40)~~

</details>

Up to seven historical entries are shown, sorted most-recent first by the forge’s merge timestamp. Older entries past the cap stay in the embedded data (so future submits can reconstruct full history) but aren’t displayed:

<summary>7 earlier closed/merged PRs (+3 older entries hidden)</summary>

The comment also embeds a base64-encoded JSON payload of the stack state inside an HTML comment marker. jjpr reads this on the next submit to inherit fossil metadata (PR numbers, merge timestamps) for PRs whose local bookmarks have been cleaned up. Don’t edit it; jjpr rewrites the whole comment on every submit.

Single-PR stacks don’t get a comment.