fix: make branch cleanup reliable on failure and in clean

[vitali87]

Summary

Three related cleanup gaps found by review:

• Failed groups left branches behind. add_worktree creates the branch before the commit step, but the failure path in _create_branches_and_commits only deleted branches of successful groups. Reproduced: after pr-2 failed, git branch --list 'pr-split/*' still showed pr-split/ns/pr-2. Now the failed groups' branches are deleted as well (silently, since add_worktree itself may have been the failure).
• delete_branch(remote=True) skipped the remote. If git branch -D failed (branch checked out to inspect CI, or already removed by merge --delete-branch), the git push origin --delete never ran. Now the remote deletion is always attempted and the local error re-raised afterwards.
• clean discarded the plan on partial failure. plan.json was unlinked unconditionally, so an orphaned remote branch or PR record was lost. Now the plan is kept when any PR/branch could not be cleaned, clean prints why and exits 1 so it can be re-run.

Test plan

• New tests: failed group's branch deleted; local failure still deletes remote; local failure without remote raises immediately; partial cleanup keeps the plan
• uv run ruff check / ruff format --check clean
• uv run pytest -q — 447 passed

[coderabbitai]

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Configuration used: defaults

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Run ID: 5653a6fa-2ad4-468c-8346-37082c9eb3a0

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 408cffb and 6d5a5f0.

📒 Files selected for processing (6)

• pr_split/cli.py
• pr_split/git_ops/branches.py
• pr_split/logs.py
• tests/test_cli_helpers.py
• tests/test_cli_new_features.py
• tests/test_git_branches.py

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[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This change expands cleanup for failed branch creation and retains the saved plan when cleanup is incomplete. Reproduction found that failed branch setup can delete a branch that existed before the command started, and that cleanup retries can remain incomplete after remote branches were already deleted because completion is neither persisted nor treated idempotently.

Confidence Score: 3/5

Not safe to merge until failed branch cleanup preserves pre-existing branches and cleanup retries can recognize resources already removed.

Two independent reproduced failures affect destructive branch handling and cleanup completion. Both were exercised with isolated runtime harnesses and captured outputs.

Files Needing Attention: pr_split/cli.py needs changes around failed-group branch cleanup and retry accounting; pr_split/git_ops/branches.py should be considered when making remote deletion idempotent.

T-Rex Logs

What T-Rex did

• T-Rex authored an isolated Git failure-path harness to reproduce the P1 finding and captured before- and after-state logs to verify the test scenario.
• T-Rex produced proofs for multiple P1 findings and referenced them in review comments.
• T-Rex performed general contract validation, confirming that the before-capture SHAs matched, the after-capture state included the expected deletion, and that the harness and command-output captures were uploaded.
• T-Rex ran the requested verification, but its local artifact references were not uploaded.

_{Ran code and verified through T-Rex}

Comments Outside Diff (3)

1. pr_split/cli.py, line 939-944 (link)

   Remote branch cleanup retries never converge

   Successful branch deletions are not persisted, so a later clean retry attempts to delete every original remote branch again. Git reports an already-deleted remote branch as an error, which leaves deleted_branches below the original record count even though the branch is gone; clean then retains the plan and exits unsuccessfully indefinitely. Treat an absent remote branch as already cleaned up, or persist completed cleanup records so retries operate only on unfinished resources.

   _{Ran code and verified through T-Rex}

2. General comment

   Failure cleanup deletes a branch that existed before the split operation

   • Bug
     • When a target branch already exists, add_worktree saves its SHA, deletes it temporarily, and restores it if git worktree add -b fails. _create_branches_and_commits then treats the failed group name as newly created and calls delete_branch on it. The restored pre-existing branch is therefore force-deleted.
   • Cause
     • pr_split/cli.py:326 synthesizes every failed group's branch name without recording whether that branch existed before the operation; pr_split/cli.py:327-329 deletes every synthesized failed name. This loses the provenance established by pr_split/git_ops/branches.py:111-120.
   • Fix
     • Have add_worktree (or its caller) return/retain whether it replaced an existing branch, and only clean failed branch names that were newly created by this invocation. Alternatively, pre-record existing target branch names/SHAs before scheduling groups and exclude those names from failure cleanup.

   _{Ran code and verified through T-Rex}

3. General comment

   Cleanup retries never complete after a remote branch was deleted during an earlier partial attempt

   • Bug
     • After any partial cleanup, _cleanup_git_state retries every original branch record. A previously deleted remote makes git push origin --delete <branch> fail. The error is caught but not treated as completed or persisted, so deleted_branches remains below the original record count even when every remote resource is already gone. clean() then exits 1 and keeps the plan, causing indefinite retry failure.
   • Cause
     • pr_split/cli.py:928-951 uses only per-invocation success counters and does not persist completed records. pr_split/git_ops/branches.py:73-87 propagates the expected missing-remote error from the delete command.
   • Fix
     • Make branch cleanup idempotent: treat a missing remote branch as successful, or query remote existence before deletion. Also persist successful PR/branch record removal (or rewrite git_state) after each success so retries operate only on unfinished resources. Keep PR behavior unchanged because gh pr close is already idempotent for closed PRs.

   _{Ran code and verified through T-Rex}

_{Reviews (1): Last reviewed commit: "fix: make branch cleanup reliable on fai..." | Re-trigger Greptile}