When asked to find all files a specific author contributed to on a branch (compared to main or another upstream), follow this procedure. The goal is to produce a simple table that both humans and LLMs can consume.

Run as a Subagent

This skill involves many sequential git commands. Delegate it to a subagent with a prompt like:

Find every file that author "Full Name" contributed to on branch <branch> compared to <upstream> . Trace contributions through file renames. Return a markdown table with columns: Status (DIRECT or VIA_RENAME), File Path, and Lines (+/-). Include a summary line at the end.

Procedure

1. Identify the author's exact git identity

git log --format="%an <%ae>" <upstream>..<branch> | sort -u

Match the requested person to their exact --author= string. Do not guess — short usernames won't match full display names (resolve via git log or the GitHub MCP get_me tool).

2. Collect all files the author directly committed to

git log --author="<Exact Name>" --format="%H" <upstream>..<branch>

For each commit hash, extract touched files:

git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r <hash>

Union all results into a set (author_files ).

3. Build rename map across the entire branch

For every commit on the branch (not just the author's), extract renames:

git diff-tree --no-commit-id -r -M <hash>

Parse lines with R status to build a map: new_path → {old_paths} .

4. Get the merge diff file list

git diff --name-only <upstream>..<branch>

These are the files that will actually land when the branch merges.

5. Classify each file in the merge diff

For each file in step 4:

• If it's in author_files → DIRECT

• Else, walk the rename map transitively (follow chains: current → old → older) and check if any ancestor is in author_files → VIA_RENAME

• Otherwise → not this author's contribution

6. Get diff stats

git diff --stat <upstream>..<branch> -- <file1> <file2> ...

7. Return the table

Format the result as a markdown table:

Total: N files, +X/-Y lines

Important Notes

• Use Python for the heavy lifting. Shell loops with inline comments break in zsh. Write a temp .py script, run it, then delete it.

• Author matching is exact. Always run step 1 first. --author does substring matching but you must verify the right person is matched (e.g., don't match "Joshua Smith" when looking for "Josh S."). Use the GitHub MCP get_me tool or git log output to resolve the correct full name.

• Renames can be multi-hop. A file may have moved contrib/chat/ → agentSessions/ → sessions/ . The rename map must be walked transitively.

• Only report files in the merge diff (step 4). Files the author touched that were later deleted entirely should not appear — they won't land in the upstream.

• The rename map must include all authors' commits, not just the target author's. Other people often do the rename commits (e.g., bulk refactors/moves).

Example Python Script

import subprocess, os

os.chdir('<repo_root>') UPSTREAM = 'main' AUTHOR = '<Author Name>' # Resolve via git log or GitHub MCP get_me

Step 2: author's files

commits = subprocess.check_output( ['git', 'log', f'--author={AUTHOR}', '--format=%H', f'{UPSTREAM}..HEAD'], text=True).strip().split('\n') author_files = set() for h in (c for c in commits if c): files = subprocess.check_output( ['git', 'diff-tree', '--no-commit-id', '--name-only', '-r', h], text=True).strip().split('\n') author_files.update(f for f in files if f)

Step 3: rename map from ALL commits

all_commits = subprocess.check_output( ['git', 'log', '--format=%H', f'{UPSTREAM}..HEAD'], text=True).strip().split('\n') rename_map = {} # new_name -> set(old_names) for h in (c for c in all_commits if c): out = subprocess.check_output( ['git', 'diff-tree', '--no-commit-id', '-r', '-M', h], text=True, timeout=5).strip() for line in out.split('\n'): if not line: continue parts = line.split('\t') if len(parts) >= 3 and 'R' in parts[0]: rename_map.setdefault(parts[2], set()).add(parts[1])

Step 4: merge diff

diff_files = subprocess.check_output( ['git', 'diff', '--name-only', f'{UPSTREAM}..HEAD'], text=True).strip().split('\n')

Step 5: classify

results = [] for f in (x for x in diff_files if x): if f in author_files: results.append(('DIRECT', f)) else: # walk rename chain chain, to_check = set(), [f] while to_check: cur = to_check.pop() if cur in chain: continue chain.add(cur) to_check.extend(rename_map.get(cur, [])) chain.discard(f) if chain & author_files: results.append(('VIA_RENAME', f))

Step 6: stats

if results: stat = subprocess.check_output( ['git', 'diff', '--stat', f'{UPSTREAM}..HEAD', '--'] + [f for _, f in results], text=True) print(stat)

Step 7: table

for kind, f in sorted(results, key=lambda x: x[1]): print(f'| {kind:12s} | {f} |') print(f'\nTotal: {len(results)} files')

Alternative Script

After following the process above, run this script to cross-check files touched by an author against the branch diff. You can do this both with an without src/vs/sessions.

AUTHOR=""

1. Find commits by author on this branch (not on main)

git log main...HEAD --author="$AUTHOR" --format="%H"

2. Get unique files touched across all those commits, excluding src/vs/sessions/

git log main...HEAD --author="$AUTHOR" --format="%H"
| xargs -I{} git diff-tree --no-commit-id -r --name-only {}
| sort -u
| grep -v '^src/vs/sessions/'

3. Cross-reference with branch diff to keep only files still changed vs main

git log main...HEAD --author="$AUTHOR" --format="%H"
| xargs -I{} git diff-tree --no-commit-id -r --name-only {}
| sort -u
| grep -v '^src/vs/sessions/'
| while read f; do git diff main...HEAD --name-only -- "$f" 2>/dev/null; done
| sort -u