Can't locally merge PRs anymore

[briantkatch]

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Bug

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For repositories that have protection rules (main branch can only be altered by pull request), it used to be possible to:

1. create a branch within the repo (unprotected) and push it
2. get the PR approved on GitHub.com
3. check out the tip of main locally, git merge the feature branch locally creating a 2-parent merge commit with your GPG signature attached, and push this merge commit of the main branch and an approved feature branch to refs/heads/main on GitHub despite the protection policy.

As of at least 2026-02-26 it seems this is broken and now such pushes will be rejected with a GH013: Changes must be made through a pull request error (even though there is an approved PR).

This workflow is essential if you want to sign the merge commit with your own GPG identity.

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[vivekkale109]

This isn’t a bug — GitHub now strictly enforces “Require pull request” rules.

Even if a PR is approved, you cannot push a locally created merge commit to a protected branch anymore. The merge must be performed through GitHub’s PR system.
So:
Local signed merge + push → rejected (GH013)
Merge via GitHub UI / API → allowed

[briantkatch]

The rule is to "require an approved pull request for the change", not "require the merge commit to be created via GitHub.com."

GitHub used to have a code path to allow this workflow (get approval of the code change, and merge it yourself), and now it's broken. That's a regression.

If there was a vulnerability related to this code path, that resulted in the decision to disable it, it would be nice to see the post-mortem.