default branch is main, not dev

I would like to link PRs to GitHub issues for 2 reasons
1. correct tracking
2. merging the PR to the default branch [closes the issue by design](https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/linking-a-pull-request-to-an-issue)

For reason 2, **we cannot have dev as the default branch** because the issue will be closed, and we will have to take a few additional steps to circumvent GitHub's intended behavior to re-open the issue until it is tested and deployed to production.

I'm open to suggestions, tho, so please discuss here