Ticket to PR — The Complete End-to-End Workflow
The full lifecycle from reading a ticket to a green PR — Plan Mode, clarifying questions, implementation, semantic commits, and autonomous CI monitoring with /loop.
Quick Reference
- →Enable Plan Mode before touching code to catch scope misunderstandings early
- →Use `gh issue view` or Jira MCP to pull ticket context directly into session
- →Let Claude interview you about edge cases before committing to a plan
- →Review and explicitly approve the plan before Claude writes a single line
- →Ask Claude to write semantic commits and detailed PR descriptions (why, not what)
- →/loop monitors CI and auto-fixes failures — you don't babysit pipelines
- →This workflow compresses 6–8 hours of work into 90 minutes of reviews
- →gh CLI covers most GitHub operations; use GitHub MCP only for API features gh doesn't expose
The Full Workflow
Most engineers use Claude Code as a faster editor. That's the wrong mental model. The right model is: Claude Code is a junior engineer who can implement anything you spec clearly. Your job shifts from typing to thinking — scoping tickets, reviewing plans, auditing diffs, approving merges. The ticket-to-PR workflow makes this concrete.
Pull ticket context
Run `gh issue view 1234` or use Jira MCP to fetch the full ticket. Paste or @-reference it into Claude Code. Claude reads the description, acceptance criteria, and any linked discussions.
Enter Plan Mode
Switch to Plan Mode before Claude explores the codebase. Claude reads relevant files, traces call paths, and builds a mental model of the affected surface area — without writing code.
Clarifying questions
Ask Claude to identify every ambiguity and edge case in the ticket. This is the interview phase. Answer Claude's questions. Surface assumptions. Resolve conflicts with the product spec before implementation begins.
Review and approve the plan
Claude produces a written implementation plan: files to change, logic to add, tests to write, migration steps if needed. You read it. You push back. You approve it.
Implementation
Exit Plan Mode. Claude implements according to the approved plan. If it diverges, stop it and redirect. You're reviewing diffs as they happen, not at the end.
Commit and PR
Ask Claude to write a semantic commit message and a detailed PR description explaining the why behind each decision. Claude creates the PR via `gh pr create`.
CI monitoring
Run `/loop` to have Claude poll CI, read failure output, fix issues, and push — repeatedly until the PR is green. You move on to the next task.
Skipping Plan Mode and jumping straight to implementation is the most expensive mistake in AI-assisted development. You don't discover the misunderstanding until you're reviewing a diff that solves the wrong problem. Plan Mode is cheap. Rewrites are not.