neon-postgres-branches

neon-postgres-branches helps users choose and create the right Neon Postgres branch type for testing and development. It solves the problem of safely testing migrations, queries, and features against production-like data without endangering production, by guiding a decision between a normal branch (which copies real data for realistic testing) and a schema-only branch (Beta, which copies structure without rows for sensitive-data workflows).

The skill provides a clear decision rule, a clarifying question for ambiguous requests, and a tool-selection order that defaults to the Neon CLI, verifying installation with neon --version and auth with neon projects list, then falling back to the Neon MCP server or REST API only when the CLI is unavailable, blocked, or unauthenticated. It gives concrete CLI commands for creating normal and schema-only branches (with --parent, --schema-only, --expires-at, and --project-id options), fetching connection strings, and resetting a drifted child branch from its parent, including the hard constraints on reset (only child branches, blocked if children exist, unavailable up to 24 hours after a snapshot restore) and the --preserve-under-name backup option. It also documents mandatory Beta feedback guidance for schema-only branching.

It targets developers, DevOps engineers, and database practitioners running CI/CD branch-per-PR workflows, migration testing, or isolated environments on Neon. As a child of the parent neon skill, it points there for platform overview. The skill only invokes official, safe Neon CLI and MCP operations for creating, resetting, and inspecting branches; it handles authentication through official tooling (neon auth or API keys) without exfiltrating credentials.