GitHub has quietly opened a private preview for a new feature called Stacked Pull Requests. The tool aims to solve a common pain point for developers: unwieldy, monolithic pull requests that are hard to review and even harder to merge.
What Stacked Pull Requests Do
Instead of submitting one giant PR, developers can now break their changes into smaller, logical layers. Each layer is a separate pull request that builds on the one before it. Reviewers can then focus on one layer at a time, without having to wade through hundreds of files at once.
The approach isn't entirely new — some teams have used manual stacking with branches and rebasing. But GitHub is baking the workflow directly into its platform, which could make it much more accessible to the broader developer community.
Large pull requests slow down code reviews. They're intimidating, they take forever to get through, and they often lead to merge conflicts. By splitting work into stacked layers, teams can review and merge smaller chunks faster. That means less context-switching for reviewers and fewer blocked pipelines for authors.
GitHub's private preview suggests the company is still ironing out the details. The feature is not yet available to everyone, and there's no public timeline for a wider rollout. Developers who want early access will need to sign up for the preview program.
For now, Stacked Pull Requests remain in private preview. GitHub hasn't said when the feature will reach general availability, but the move signals a continued push to improve the developer experience on the platform. Teams that rely on large, complex codebases will be watching closely.
