Branch protection rules migrated to GitHub rulesets

As of ~16:00UTC today (8 July 2026), all rules configured to enforce the desired contributor workflows and quality requirements in the Gutenberg repository have been converted from branch protection rules to repository rulesets. This was done to fix a broken step in the plugin release process where the GitHub app responsible for pushing version bump commits to trunk was unable to do so.

While rulesets are an iteration on branch protection rules, they are not a flat out replacement and can be used together. However, they do have several advantages over branch protection rules, including more flexibility, the ability to layer them, and being publicly accessible for contributors to understand why they may be unable to perform a certain action on a specific branch.

After looking through the pre-existing protection rules, there did not appear to be any benefit to keeping any one branch protection rule over a ruleset. Best efforts were made to ensure the new rulesets function identically to the previous protection rules, but there may be some nuance that was missed.

If you happen to notice any permission or capability-related problems, please mention them in the comments below or share them in #core-editor so they can be fixed.

Props @jorbin for comparing the new rulesets with the previous branch protection rules, and proofreading this post.