Resolve merge conflicts

Resolve conflicts from the intent of both changes. Preserve unrelated work and avoid inventing behavior that neither side requested.

Establish the operation

Inspect the Git status, the current branch, the merge or rebase state, the conflicting files, and the relevant commits. For each conflict, trace both sides to their source commit, pull request, issue, test, or documentation.

Resolve by intent

For each conflicted hunk:

1. State the behavior each side intended.
2. Preserve both behaviors when they are compatible.
3. When they conflict, choose the behavior required by the operation's stated goal and record the trade-off.
4. Remove every conflict marker and inspect the surrounding code for duplicate or missing behavior.
5. Stage only files whose conflicts are resolved.

Do not abort the operation, rewrite unrelated history, or discard either side without the user's authorization.

Verify and finish

Run the focused checks for the resolved behavior, then use verify-change for the complete diff. If the request includes completing the operation, continue the merge or rebase until Git reports no remaining conflict. Otherwise, leave the resolved state ready for the contributor and report the exact next command.