| name | pr-overview |
| description | Pull a PR from GitHub, run parallel review agents (code reuse, quality, efficiency, spec adherence) in read-only mode, surface unresolved comments, and write a self-contained HTML overview page to the repo root. Use whenever the user wants a read-only summary of a PR before deciding what to do — phrases like "overview of PR X", "summarise this PR", "what's the state of PR X", "give me an HTML overview", or any time they want a browseable artifact without touching the code. |
PR Overview
Fetch a GitHub PR, review it through multiple specialized agents (read-only), collect any unresolved comments, and produce a self-contained HTML overview at pr-overview.html in the repo root so the user can read it in a browser.
This skill never modifies code, never commits, never pushes, and never resolves comment threads. It only produces an overview. For a workflow that also applies fixes, use pr-review-html; for one that addresses reviewer comments, use pr-review-fixer.
Phase 1: Fetch the PR
Resolve which PR to look at, in this order:
- An explicit number, URL, or branch name from the user
- Otherwise the PR for the current branch via
gh pr view --json number
Pull what you need:
gh pr view <pr> --json number,title,author,baseRefName,headRefName,body,url,state,commits,files,createdAtgh pr diff <pr> for the unified diff
Do not run gh pr checkout. This skill is read-only — the user may be on a different branch deliberately, and switching branches risks losing work. If the agents need code context beyond the diff, read files at the PR's headRefName via gh api rather than checking out.
Keep the PR body, author, createdAt, and url from the gh pr view JSON — these flow into Phase 6's pr_description section so the reader can see the author's framing verbatim.
Show the user which PR you're about to summarise (number, title, author, head → base, commit count) before doing the heavier work — a cheap sanity check that catches the wrong PR number early.
Phase 2: Fetch unresolved comments
Use the same GraphQL query as pr-review-fixer to pull every code-level thread, PR-level review, and discussion comment:
gh api graphql -f query='
query($owner: String!, $repo: String!, $pr: Int!) {
repository(owner: $owner, name: $repo) {
pullRequest(number: $pr) {
reviewThreads(first: 100) {
nodes {
id isResolved url
comments(first: 50) {
nodes { id body author { login } path line createdAt url }
}
}
}
reviews(first: 50) {
nodes { id body state author { login } createdAt url }
}
comments(first: 100) {
nodes { id body author { login } createdAt url }
}
}
}
}
' -f owner=OWNER -f repo=REPO -F pr=$PR_NUM
A comment counts as a "Claude review" if either the author is claude[bot] (the upstream anthropics/claude-code-action Action) or the body contains the sentinel <!-- claude-local-review --> (emitted by the local-review agent when pr-pilot runs it locally). Treat both sources uniformly in the rules below.
Filter:
- Code-level threads: drop any thread where
isResolved: true. For each remaining thread, surface the first comment as the top-level entry and any later comments as replies. If multiple Claude review comments exist in a thread, keep only the latest as the top-level entry.
- PR-level reviews: drop reviews with empty/whitespace bodies. Drop reviews where
state == "APPROVED" and the body has no actionable feedback. For Claude reviews, keep only the most recent.
- Discussion comments: drop pure acknowledgements, CI bot noise, and
pr-review-fixer's "PR Review Overview" iteration reports (matched by the <!-- pr-review-overview --> sentinel or, for legacy comments, claude[bot] author + "PR Review Overview" in the body — they're already in the GitHub UI). For Claude reviews, keep only the latest.
Each surviving item becomes an entry in Phase 6's unresolved_comments array. Preserve the comment body verbatim — don't rewrite, summarise, or "clean up" reviewer markdown.
If there are no unresolved comments, the section is simply omitted from the output. Don't fabricate one.
Phase 3: Locate the spec (if any)
Phase 4 review and Phase 5 explanation are both richer when grounded in the design intent, so look for a matching feature spec.
- Use the PR head branch name and title as hints
- Search
specs/ for a folder matching that feature
- If found, read requirements, design, tasks, and decision log
- If not found, skip spec-aware checks and continue
Phase 4: Launch review agents in parallel (read-only)
Spawn all agents in a single message so they run concurrently. Pass each one the full diff — they need complete context to spot cross-file issues. Each agent reports findings only; nothing is fixed.
Agent 1 — Code reuse
For each change:
- Grep for existing utilities, helpers, and similar patterns. Common locations: utility directories, shared modules, files adjacent to the changes.
- Flag any new function that duplicates existing functionality, and point at the existing one.
- Flag inline logic that could use an existing utility — hand-rolled string manipulation, manual path handling, ad-hoc type guards, custom env checks.
Agent 2 — Code quality
Look for hacky patterns:
- Redundant state (duplicates existing state, cached values that could be derived, observers that could be direct calls)
- Parameter sprawl (new params bolted onto a function instead of restructuring it)
- Copy-paste with slight variation (near-duplicates that should share an abstraction)
- Leaky abstractions (exposing internals or breaking existing boundaries)
- Stringly-typed code where existing constants, enums, or branded types would fit
Agent 3 — Efficiency
Look for waste:
- Redundant computations, repeated reads, duplicate API calls, N+1 patterns
- Independent operations run sequentially that could run in parallel
- New blocking work added to startup or per-request hot paths
- Pre-checking file/resource existence before operating (TOCTOU anti-pattern)
- Unbounded data structures, missing cleanup, listener leaks
- Reading whole files when a slice would do, loading everything when filtering for one
Agent 4 — Spec & docs (only if a spec was found)
- Implementation matches requirements and design; divergences are documented in the decision log
- README, CLAUDE.md, or related docs need updates to reflect the changes
- Tests exist for new/modified behavior and test behavior, not implementation details
Aggregate the findings. Every finding's status is "raised" in the output — there are no "fixed" entries in this skill. Skip false positives and trivial style nits.
Phase 5: Implementation explanation and insight material
Invoke the explain-like skill (Skill tool with skill="explain-like") to produce all three expertise levels — Beginner, Intermediate, Expert. Keep the explanation in memory for the HTML output. Do not write it to specs/{feature_name}/implementation.md — this skill doesn't modify the repo.
Use the explanation as a validation pass:
- Anything in the spec that can't be cleanly explained → flag as potentially incomplete
- Anything in the explanation that diverges from the design → flag the divergence
- Add a "Completeness Assessment" with what's fully implemented, partially implemented, and missing
In the same pass, extract three pieces of structured content from the diff, commit messages, PR description/body, and (if present) the decision log. This feeds Phase 6 and must be produced even when no spec exists:
- Important changes — the 3–7 commits or hunks that matter most for a reviewer. For each: a one-line title (file or area + verb), why it matters (correctness, performance, API surface, user-visible behaviour, security), and the specific line range or symbol.
- Learnings — patterns, idioms, or APIs introduced in this PR that a reader could reuse elsewhere. One short "takeaway" per item, with a pointer to the example in the diff. Skip pure mechanical changes.
- Decision rationale — for each non-trivial choice, capture the reason. Source order: (a) decision log entries that match the PR, (b) PR description, (c) commit message bodies, (d) inline code comments added in the diff, (e) inferred from the diff. Mark inferred entries explicitly as
inferred. If a decision is non-trivial but no rationale can be found anywhere, list it under "Open questions for the author" rather than inventing one.
Phase 6: Generate the overview HTML
Render {repo-root}/pr-overview.html (overwrite if it exists) using the shared renderer script. Do not hand-write the HTML — assemble a JSON description and invoke the script. The same renderer is used by pre-push-review and pr-review-html; keep template/palette changes in the script, not duplicated across skills.
Script: ~/.claude/scripts/build_review_html.py.
Step 1: Write per-file diff fragments
For each changed file in the PR, dump the unified diff to a separate .txt file. Use gh pr diff <pr> -- <path> or split the full PR diff. Put the fragments in a working directory next to where the JSON will live, e.g. {repo-root}/.claude/pr-overview-diffs/ or $CLAUDE_JOB_DIR. Keep filenames simple (e.g. diff-services-foo.txt); the JSON references them by name.
Step 2: Assemble overview.json
Schema (every top-level key is optional except repo and files — empty sections are dropped from the body and TOC):
{
"repo": {"name": "myrepo", "path": "/abs/path",
"branch": "feature/x", "remote": "origin/main"},
"title": "PR overview: #123 — Add foo",
"subtitle": "<html> PR #123 by @author · merging feature/x → main · <a href=\"<pr-url>\">view on GitHub</a>",
"metrics": [{"label": "PR", "value": "#123"},
{"label": "author", "value": "@someone"},
{"label": "head → base", "value": "feature/x → main"},
{"label": "commits", "value": "5"},
{"label": "files", "value": "12 touched"},
{"label": "lines", "value": "+820 / -94"},
{"label": "unresolved", "value": "3 comments"}],
"verdict": {"label": "Ready to merge",
"tone": "success",
"detail": "<html> one-paragraph justification"},
"at_a_glance": ["<html> what this PR does in plain English", "..."],
"pr_description": {
"author": "@someone",
"url": "https://github.com/.../pull/123",
"created_at": "2026-05-16",
"body": "raw PR body from `gh pr view --json body`, passed UNMODIFIED"
},
"explanation": {
"beginner": "<html> What Changed / Why It Matters / Key Concepts",
"intermediate": "<html> Architecture / Patterns / Trade-offs",
"expert": "<html> Deep dive / Architecture impact / Edge cases"
},
"commits": [{"sha": "abc1234", "subject": "feat: foo", "author": "Name", "date": "2026-05-16"}],
"important_changes": [
{
"title": "services/foo: new retry policy",
"file": "services/foo.go",
"why": "Why this matters for the reviewer.",
"what": "services/foo.go:88-142",
"takeaway": "What a reader can learn from this — reusable insight.",
"rationale": "Why this approach was chosen.",
"rationale_inferred": false
}
],
"decisions": [
{"title": "Pin tokio version.",
"body": "<html> body, may include <code>…</code>",
"inferred": false}
],
"findings": [
{"severity": "major", "area": "services/foo concurrency",
"finding": "...", "resolution": "Suggested approach — left for the author to decide.",
"status": "raised"}
],
"unresolved_comments": [
{
"author": "@reviewer",
"type": "code",
"path": "services/foo.go",
"line": 88,
"body": "raw markdown comment body, passed UNMODIFIED",
"url": "https://github.com/.../pull/123#discussion_r1234567",
"created_at": "2026-05-16",
"replies": [
{"author": "@author", "body": "...", "created_at": "2026-05-16"}
]
}
],
"double_check": [{"title": "Migration ordering.", "body": "<html> body"}],
"files": [
{"path": "services/foo.go", "badge": "Modified", "stat": "+140 / -22",
"diff_file": "diff-services-foo.txt"}
],
"publish_metadata": {
"title": "PR #123 — Add foo (overview)",
"repoUrl": "https://github.com/owner/repo",
"pr": 123,
"severity": "suggestions",
"summary": "1-3 sentence headline finding shown in the feed reader."
}
}
Rendering contract (implemented by the script — informational, you don't enforce it):
- Pass-through HTML fields:
subtitle, at_a_glance items, verdict.detail, every explanation panel, decisions[].body, double_check[].body. Write actual HTML.
- All other fields are HTML-escaped automatically. Write plain text.
pr_description.body and unresolved_comments[].body are HTML-escaped and rendered in a pre-wrap monospace block — markdown markers (##, lists, fenced code) survive on screen as the author wrote them. Do not rewrite, trim, or summarise. Verbatim is the whole point.- Each unresolved comment renders as a warning-bordered card with a type pill (code/review/discussion), author, file:line (if code-level), date, and a "view on GitHub" link. Replies collapse into a
<details> block.
- Diffs are escaped and dropped into
<pre><code class="language-diff">…</code></pre> with highlight.js, then restyled to the Prism Dark green/red tokens.
- The three-level explanation renders as CSS-only radio-button tabs in Beginner → Intermediate → Expert order.
- Important-change cards show a magenta-bordered Takeaway callout and a cyan-bordered Rationale callout.
- Findings counts derive from the
status field; in this skill every finding is "raised".
- TOC, overview cards, and section anchors are generated automatically. Empty sections vanish.
publish_metadata is emitted as a <script type="application/json" id="review-meta"> block in <head>.
Step 3: Invoke the script
python3 ~/.claude/scripts/build_review_html.py \
--data /path/to/overview.json \
--output {repo-root}/pr-overview.html \
--diff-dir /path/to/diff-fragments
The script prints the output path on success. Surface that path to the user so they can open it in a browser.
When to edit the script vs the SKILL.md
- Edit the script (
~/.claude/scripts/build_review_html.py) when you need a new card, callout colour, layout tweak, or theme adjustment. Changes there are shared with pre-push-review and pr-review-html.
- Edit this SKILL.md when you change the JSON contract, the output location, or phase semantics specific to PR overviews.
Populating publish_metadata
Always populate this field. Mapping rules:
title: human-readable, typically the PR title with (overview) suffix.repoUrl: the PR's repo URL (from gh pr view --json url or git remote get-url origin).pr: the PR number as an integer. Do not also set branch.severity: derive from the findings and the unresolved-comments count — no findings or unresolved comments → lgtm; nits or low-stakes unresolved threads only → suggestions; major findings or substantive unresolved threads → needs-changes; blocking/security/correctness issues → blocking.summary: 1–3 sentences leading with the headline takeaway (e.g. "3 unresolved threads, all on error handling in foo.go").
Phase 7: Publish
Check whether the pulsar binary is on PATH (command -v pulsar). If it is, invoke pulsar publish <path-to-html> — the binary validates the metadata block, normalises the repo URL, moves the file into $HOME/CodeReviews/YYYY-MM/, and deletes the source. Surface the archived path in Phase 8 instead of the source path. Treat a non-zero exit code as a hard error and surface the stderr message verbatim. If pulsar is not on PATH, skip this phase silently.
Phase 8: Summary
End with a short verdict for the user: Looks good, Worth a closer look (with the top 2–3 findings), or Blocking concerns (with the must-address list). Mention the unresolved-comment count and link to the HTML output (or the archived path returned by Phase 7 if publish ran).
This skill never pushes, commits, merges, or resolves threads — surface what's there and let the user decide what to do next.
