| name | async-pr-review |
| description | Trigger this skill when the user wants to start an asynchronous PR review, run background checks on a PR, or check the status of a previously started async PR review. |
Async PR Review
This skill provides a set of tools to asynchronously review a Pull Request. It will create a background job to run the project's preflight checks, execute Gemini-powered test plans, and perform a comprehensive code review using custom prompts.
This skill is designed to showcase an advanced "Agentic Asynchronous Pattern":
- Native Background Shells vs Headless Inference: While Gemini CLI can natively spawn and detach background shell commands (using the
run_shell_command tool with is_background: true), a standard bash background job cannot perform LLM inference. To conduct AI-driven code reviews and test generation in the background, the shell script must invoke the gemini executable headlessly using -p. This offloads the AI tasks to independent worker agents.
- Dynamic Git Scoping: The review scripts avoid hardcoded paths. They use
git rev-parse --show-toplevel to automatically resolve the root of the user's current project.
- Ephemeral Worktrees: Instead of checking out branches in the user's main workspace, the skill provisions temporary git worktrees in
.gemini/tmp/async-reviews/pr-<number>. This prevents git lock conflicts and namespace pollution.
- Agentic Evaluation (
check-async-review.sh): The check script outputs clean JSON/text statuses for the main agent to parse. The interactive agent itself synthesizes the final assessment dynamically from the generated log files.
Workflow
- Determine Action: Establish whether the user wants to start a new async review or check the status of an existing one.
- If the user says "start an async review for PR #123" or similar, proceed to Start Review.
- If the user says "check the status of my async review for PR #123" or similar, proceed to Check Status.
Start Review
If the user wants to start a new async PR review:
- Ask the user for the PR number if they haven't provided it.
- Execute the
async-review.sh script, passing the PR number as the first argument. Be sure to run it with the is_background flag set to true to ensure it immediately detaches.
.gemini/skills/async-pr-review/scripts/async-review.sh <PR_NUMBER>
- Inform the user that the tasks have started successfully and they can check the status later.
Check Status
If the user wants to check the status or view the final assessment of a previously started async review:
- Ask the user for the PR number if they haven't provided it.
- Execute the
check-async-review.sh script, passing the PR number as the first argument:
.gemini/skills/async-pr-review/scripts/check-async-review.sh <PR_NUMBER>
- Evaluate Output: Read the output from the script.
- If the output contains
STATUS: IN_PROGRESS, tell the user which tasks are still running.
- If the output contains
STATUS: COMPLETE, use your file reading tools (read_file) to retrieve the contents of final-assessment.md, review.md, pr-diff.diff, npm-test.log, and test-execution.log files from the LOG_DIR specified in the output.
- Final Assessment: Read those files, synthesize their results, and give the user a concise recommendation on whether the PR builds successfully, passes tests, and if you recommend they approve it based on the review.
