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Dco

DevOps & Security
dco

Dco is an Agent Skill for devops & security published in the linuxfoundation/crowd.dev repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Recover from missing DCO sign-off on commits. Handles the single-commit amend, older-commit recovery via interactive rebase or cherry-pick, and explains the Probot DCO check that blocks PRs without sign-off. Use when a PR fails the DCO check, when a commit needs a Signed-off-by trailer added retroactively, or when sign-off was forgotten during rebase / cherry-pick / amend.

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How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy and paste the prompt below.
  3. Review files and risks before approving any action.
Prompt to paste
Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/linuxfoundation/crowd.dev/blob/HEAD/.claude/skills/dco/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/dco, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use.

DCO Sign-off Recovery

All commits in this repo must carry a Signed-off-by: trailer (Developer Certificate of Origin). The Probot DCO check on PRs blocks merge until every commit is signed.

The standard way to add it is with --signoff at commit time. This skill handles the cases where that was missed.

Case 1: Last commit only

git commit --amend --signoff -S --no-edit
git push --force-with-lease

--force-with-lease is preferred over plain --force — it refuses if someone else has pushed to the branch since you last fetched.

Case 2: Older commit on the same branch

Find the commit hash of the oldest unsigned commit:

git log --pretty='%h %s %(trailers:key=Signed-off-by,valueonly)' origin/main..HEAD
# Any line with an empty trailing field is unsigned

Then interactively rebase from one commit before that:

git rebase -i <parent-of-unsigned-commit>
# In the editor, change `pick` to `edit` for each unsigned commit
# Save and exit; the rebase stops at each `edit` line so you can amend

For each commit in the rebase, replace it with a signed version:

git commit --amend --signoff -S --no-edit
git rebase --continue

When done, force-push:

git push --force-with-lease

Case 3: Cherry-pick / merge brought in unsigned commits

Cherry-pick with sign-off baked in:

git cherry-pick --signoff <sha>

If you already cherry-picked without it, fall back to Case 1 or Case 2 above.

Verifying the whole branch

Before pushing, verify every commit ahead of origin/main has both DCO and GPG:

git log --format='%G? %(trailers:key=Signed-off-by,valueonly,separator=%x20) %h %s' origin/main..HEAD

Each line must start with G or U (good GPG signature) AND carry a non-empty Signed-off-by value before the SHA. Codes N / B / E need investigation. See .claude/rules/commit-workflow.md for the canonical signing policy.

What the Probot DCO check looks for

The check passes when every commit message includes a Signed-off-by: Name <email> trailer matching the commit author's email. The --signoff (or -s) flag adds this trailer automatically using your user.name and user.email git config.

A failing DCO check on a PR will show a "Details" link explaining which commits are missing sign-off.