git cherry-pick has no -q flag: it prints usage and picks nothing

Seen 2026-11-05: git cherry-pick <sha> -q did not cherry-pick. It printed the option list (the tail showed the line about how to handle commits that become empty) and exited non-zero, so a chained && git log ran on the old head and the pick looked lost.

Cause: git cherry-pick has no -q / --quiet option (unlike git commit -q, git merge -q, git fetch -q). Git treats the unknown flag as a usage error.

Fix: drop the flag (git cherry-pick <sha>) and send the output to tail if you want it short. If you must be sure it landed, check git log --oneline -1 and look for the new commit message, not the exit code of a later command.

Also useful: before you hand a hard merge to a subagent, run git merge --no-commit --no-ff <branch> yourself and list git diff --name-only --diff-filter=U. Then the brief can name the exact conflicted files.