internals

How Ralph Tracks and Switches Between Feature Branches During Execution

April 13, 2026 snarktank/ralph ↗

Ralph tracks feature branches by comparing the branchName field in prd.json against a persisted .last-branch file; when they differ, it archives the previous run's state to a timestamped archive/ directory before updating the tracker.

In the snarktank/ralph repository, branch management is handled entirely within the driver script ralph.sh through a simple state persistence mechanism. This ensures that when you switch between feature branches—such as moving from ralph/auth-refactor to ralph/ui-cleanup—

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