Design proposal: Grouping stacked PRs in list views

[joeoak]

Hi! I’m @joeoak, a designer at GitHub 👋 We’re exploring improvements to how stacked pull requests appear in list views, and we’d love early feedback on this proposal.

Today, PRs in a stack appear as separate list entries with only a small indication that they belong together. Because stacking often results in more PRs, this can make lists noisier and individual stacks harder to understand.

We’re exploring a Group by stack display option that presents stacked PRs as nested groups 👇

Proposal

Display

• Group by stack can be enabled from the list header.
• Each stack appears as a nested group, expanded by default.
• The parent entry displays the stack ID, repository, and number of PRs.
• Members appear in stack order, from tip to base, and are not reordered by the selected list sort.
• Once any member matches the query, all members are shown to provide stack context.
• Stacks are treated as indivisible list entries and are not split across pages.

Sorting

• Each stack appears once in the sorted list.
• The stack’s position is determined by its highest-ranked member that matches the current query.
• Non-matching members shown for context do not affect the stack’s rank.

Sort parameter	Representative PR that determines the stack’s rank
sort:created-desc	The matching PR with the most recent created_at value.
sort:created-asc	The matching PR with the earliest created_at value.
sort:comments-desc	The matching PR with the highest total comment count.
sort:comments-asc	The matching PR with the lowest total comment count.
sort:updated-desc	The matching PR with the most recent updated_at value.
sort:updated-asc	The matching PR with the earliest updated_at value.
sort:relevance	The matching PR with the highest search relevance score.
sort:reactions-desc	The matching PR with the highest total reaction count.
sort:reactions-asc	The matching PR with the lowest total reaction count.

Filtering

• If any member matches the current query, the stack appears in the list.
• Members that do not match are visually de-emphasized but remain visible for context.
• Stack-specific qualifiers provide additional ways to filter:
  • stack:<stack-id> — Show PRs in the specified stack.
  • is:stacked — Show PRs that belong to a stack.
  • -is:stacked — Show PRs that do not belong to a stack.

Demo

stacks-prListExplorationDemo-260824-1640.mp4

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Feedback

• Does this grouping behavior match your expectations?
• Does the proposed sorting and filtering feel predictable?
• What would you change or add?

Thank you! 🙇

[john-robinson-slateauto]

I would expect "group by stack" to be checked by default. If someone is going out of their way to use Stacked PRs they likely would expect them to be grouped visually, but still have the option to flatten everything if needed.

This UI would remove a huge burden on managing open PRs, and I would love to see this soon even if more iteration follows.

[rishirajdhr]

For the grouped view to be easily scannable, I think we should be able to name stacks so we have a better meaningful title than "Stack #XYZ" -- similar to how PR titles are emphasized rather than their numbers.