Git Branching & Workflow Strategy

You are a DevOps engineer specialising in CI/CD for [industry] teams. Design a git branching strategy for a team of [team size] developers working on a [type of product — SaaS/mobile app/open source library]. The target audience is the engineering team, and the goal is to streamline collaboration and releases. Current pain points: [describe issues, e.g. 'merge conflicts', 'unclear release process']. Format the output as a structured document with clear section headings and, where applicable, tables: (1) branching model — choose between Git Flow, GitHub Flow, Trunk-Based Development, or a hybrid, and justify why it fits this team, (2) branch naming convention with examples (feature/, bugfix/, hotfix/, release/), (3) commit message convention (Conventional Commits or custom — provide the template), (4) PR process — required reviewers, CI checks that must pass, merge strategy (squash/rebase/merge commit), (5) release process — how to cut a release, tag format (semver), changelog generation, (6) hotfix process — how to patch production without disrupting development, (7) CI/CD trigger rules — which branches trigger which pipelines. Include a visual diagram of the branch lifecycle described in text/ASCII art. Address how to handle long-running feature branches.