Git Branch Hygiene: The Complete Guide to a Clean Repository

Git Branch Hygiene: How to Stop Drowning in Stale Branches (And Never Go Back) Affiliate disclosure: Some links in this article are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. You open your terminal. You type git branch . And you stare into an abyss: chore/bump-deps-2025-08 experiment/graphql-idea feature/auth-refactor feature/auth-refactor-v2 feature/auth-refactor-FINAL feature/checkout-modal fix/button-padding-maybe hotfix/prod-emergency-march janes-testing-branch main * refactor/db-layer test-do-not-delete wip/new-homepage wip/new-homepage-2 Fourteen branches. You remember maybe half of them. Three say "do not delete" but you don't know why. One is named after a colleague who left six months ago. This is git branch debt. Every developer accumulates it. Almost no one has a system for clearing it. This guide gives you that system. Why Stale Branches Are a Real Problem It's tempting to dismiss this as a cosmetic issue — "who cares if ther