Trunk-based development is a source control workflow where developers integrate their changes into a single shared branch, usually called main or trunk, frequently and in small increments, rather than working in isolation on long-lived feature branches. It is closely tied to continuous integration in the literal sense of the term: integration happens continuously, not in occasional large merges.
What changed in 2026
- Feature flag tooling kept maturing, making it more practical for smaller teams to adopt trunk-based development without building flag infrastructure from scratch, as managed flag platforms became standard rather than a big-company luxury.
- AI-assisted code review sped up the PR review bottleneck, one of the practical obstacles to committing small changes frequently, by giving faster first-pass feedback before a human reviewer is needed.
- Stacked diffs tooling grew in popularity as a middle ground, letting teams keep small, reviewable changes while still working through short-lived branches rather than committing straight to trunk.
- More teams reported using trunk-based development with very short-lived branches (hours, not days) rather than literal direct-to-trunk commits, which the trunk-based development model has always technically allowed as a compromise.
How trunk-based development actually works
Instead of branching off trunk for a feature and merging back days or weeks later, developers work in small slices, commit to trunk (or a branch that merges back within a day) frequently, and rely on automated tests to catch regressions immediately. Anything not ready for users is hidden behind a feature flag rather than kept out of trunk on a separate branch. This means trunk is always deployable, in principle, at any commit.
Trunk-based development vs feature branching
| Aspect |
Trunk-based development |
Long-lived feature branches |
| Branch lifetime |
Hours, or direct to trunk |
Days to weeks |
| Merge conflicts |
Rare, small, frequent |
Larger, less frequent, harder to resolve |
| Unfinished work handling |
Feature flags |
Kept off trunk until done |
| CI requirement |
Fast and reliable, non-negotiable |
Helpful but less load-bearing |
| Release readiness |
Trunk always close to releasable |
Releasable only after merge and stabilization |
Compare this against a feature branch workflow, which isolates work for longer and merges less frequently — a reasonable default for many teams, but one that trades integration pain for isolation.
What trunk-based development requires to actually work
- A CI pipeline fast enough that developers actually wait for it, typically well under 10 minutes for the core suite. If CI is slow, people stop running it before merging, and the whole safety net degrades.
- A test suite trustworthy enough that a green build means something. Flaky tests that fail randomly train developers to ignore failures, which is fatal to a workflow that depends on trunk staying healthy.
- Feature flag infrastructure, even a simple one, to separate "deployed" from "released." Without flags, incomplete work either blocks trunk or ships half-finished to users.
- Small commit discipline, which is as much a team habit as a tooling choice. Trunk-based development does not work if people batch a week of changes into one commit and call it trunk-based because there was technically no branch.
When trunk-based development is not the right fit
Teams with weak or nonexistent CI, a codebase without meaningful test coverage, or a regulatory requirement for formal code review gates before any code reaches a shared branch will struggle with strict trunk-based development. In those cases, short-lived feature branches with fast review turnaround capture most of the integration benefits without requiring the CI maturity trunk-based development assumes.
FAQ
Is trunk-based development the same as continuous deployment?
No. Trunk-based development is about how code gets integrated into the shared branch; continuous deployment is about how it gets released to users. Many trunk-based teams still gate releases behind manual approval or scheduled deploys.
How do code reviews work if everyone commits straight to trunk?
Most real-world trunk-based teams still use very short-lived pull requests, reviewed and merged within hours, rather than committing with zero review. The "trunk-based" part is the branch lifetime, not the absence of review.
Do I need feature flags for trunk-based development?
Effectively yes, for anything beyond trivial changes. Without a way to hide incomplete work, you either block trunk on unfinished features or ship half-built functionality to users.
Does trunk-based development work with monorepos?
It pairs naturally with monorepos, since a single trunk across many services avoids the cross-repo coordination problem that branching strategies in a multi-repo setup often create.
Where to go next