Trace from molecule-core cycle 107 (2026-04-24): 15 staging PRs stuck
DIRTY (real merge conflicts) with 0 merges in 1+ hours. Authors couldn't
rebase to fix the conflicts because the pre-commit hook (shipped in
0.1.11) refuses ANY commit that includes forbidden paths in the diff —
including rebase replays of historical commits that pre-date the gate.
Specifically, agents trying to `git rebase staging` on a PR like
"docs(marketing): Phase 30 social copy" fail at the first commit replay
because that commit added marketing/* files. The fix would require
interactive rebase + manual file deletion + commit amend — agents don't
do that, so the PR stays DIRTY indefinitely.
Detection: check .git for rebase-merge/, rebase-apply/, CHERRY_PICK_HEAD,
MERGE_HEAD, or REVERT_HEAD. These state markers exist only during the
corresponding git operation. Skip the hook silently when present.
The hook still blocks fresh `git commit` (the failure mode it was
designed for). It just doesn't try to police what was already in git
history.
Bumped to 0.1.14.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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