gitlab-mr-review

name

gitlab-mr-review

description

Manually triggered skill that harvests merge request review comments from a GitLab project using MCP tools, classifies them for playbook relevance, and auto-invokes packmind-update-playbook with structured findings. Use when wanting to mine merged MR discussions for recurring patterns, missing conventions, or stale rules that should be captured in the Packmind playbook. Supports non-interactive mode via `CI=true` or `--non-interactive` for scheduled runs.

GitLab MR Review Mining

Harvest discussion notes from merged GitLab merge requests, classify them for playbook relevance, and feed actionable findings into the packmind-update-playbook workflow.

Workflow: Phase 0 → 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5. Follow every phase in order.

Prerequisite: The GitLab MCP server must be available. Load references/gitlab-mcp-tools.md for tool signatures and parameters.

Phase 0: Collect Parameters

Gather the required inputs before fetching any data.

Execution Mode Detection

Determine the execution mode before collecting any parameters:

1. Check CI env var: run echo $CI. If the value is true, set non_interactive = true.
2. Check skill arguments: if the skill was invoked with --non-interactive, set non_interactive = true.
3. Parse optional arguments:
   • --days N — override the default time period (default: 7 days)
   • --project namespace/project — override git remote inference

If neither condition is met, non_interactive = false (interactive mode — original behavior).

Collect Parameters

1. Infer project_path from the git remote:

   git remote get-url origin
   

   Parse the GitLab project path (namespace/project or group/subgroup/project) from the URL. Handle both SSH ([e-mail]:namespace/project.git) and HTTPS (https://gitlab.com/namespace/project.git) formats. Strip .git suffix if present.

   • Interactive: If the remote is unavailable or ambiguous, ask the user.
   • Non-interactive: If --project was provided, use it. Otherwise abort with error: "Could not infer project path from git remote. Use --project namespace/project."

2. Gather time_period:

   • Interactive: Ask the user how far back to look (default: 7 days, max: 90 days).
   • Non-interactive: Use --days value if provided, otherwise default to 7 days silently.

   Compute the cutoff date as today - time_period in YYYY-MM-DD format.

3. Confirm before proceeding:

   • Interactive: Display and BLOCK until the user confirms:

     "Mining MR review comments for project_path merged in the last N days (since YYYY-MM-DD). Proceed?"

   • Non-interactive: Log the parameters and proceed automatically:

     "Non-interactive mode: mining MR review comments for project_path merged in the last N days (since YYYY-MM-DD)."

Phase 1: Fetch MRs

Use mcp__gitlab__search with:

• scope: "merge_requests"
• state: "merged" (run a second search with state: "opened" to also include open MRs)
• project_id: project_path
• search: "*" (must use "*", not "" — an empty string causes a 500 error)

Paginate using page and per_page (max 100 per page). Collect MR IIDs, titles, and web URLs.

For merged MRs, call mcp__gitlab__get_merge_request to get full details including merged_at. Filter out MRs where merged_at is before the cutoff date. For open MRs, use created_at or updated_at from the search results for the time filter.

• If no MRs remain within the time window, inform the user and stop.
• Display progress: "Found N MRs to analyze (M merged, K open)."

Phase 2: Fetch Review Comments & Filter

Use mcp__gitlab__search with scope: "notes" and project_id: project_path to fetch all discussion notes. Then correlate notes to MRs using noteable_type: "MergeRequest" and noteable_iid.

Important: Do NOT use mcp__gitlab__get_workitem_notes for MR notes — it only supports work item URLs (/-/work_items/<iid>), not merge request URLs. MR IIDs are not work item IIDs.

Filtering

Apply these filters to discard noise:

System note filtering — discard notes where the system flag is true. These are auto-generated by GitLab for:

• Label changes
• Assignee changes
• Milestone changes
• Pipeline status updates
• Branch operations (merge, rebase)
• Reviewer assignments

Low-value filtering — discard comments that:

• Are shorter than 15 characters
• Match low-value patterns: consists only of "LGTM", "+1", thumbs-up emoji variants, "nit", "thanks", ":thumbsup:", ":+1:"

Thread deduplication — when a note has a discussion_id, group notes by discussion. Keep only the root note unless a reply adds substantive new feedback (>30 chars and not a simple acknowledgment).

Display progress: "Collected N review comments from M MRs (after filtering)."

If no comments remain after filtering, inform the user and stop.

Phase 3: Classify Comments

Categorize each remaining comment by playbook relevance:

High relevance (keep)

• convention — Enforces or suggests a naming, structure, or organizational pattern
• best-practice — Recommends a better approach for correctness, performance, or maintainability
• recurring-feedback — Same feedback appears across 2+ different MRs
• bug-prevention — Points out a pattern that could lead to bugs

Low relevance (discard)

• style — Pure formatting preference
• clarification — Asks a question without suggesting a change
• nitpick — Minor, one-off preference

Retain only High-relevance comments.

Recurring Theme Detection

Group retained comments by semantic similarity. A recurring theme is 2+ comments across different MRs that address the same underlying pattern. For each theme:

• Assign a short descriptive label
• List all contributing comments
• Note the occurrence count

Codebase Relevance Gate

After classification, apply a strict codebase relevance filter to all high-relevance findings. GitLab MR notes can include CI/CD pipeline chatter, process comments, and DevOps discussions that aren't relevant to code.

Litmus test: "Would an AI coding agent need to know this when writing, reviewing, or shipping code in this repository?" — if no, discard the signal.

Signal	Verdict	Why
"All API endpoints must validate input"	KEEP	Coding convention
"Use factory pattern for test data"	KEEP	Best practice
"Always add DB migration for schema changes"	KEEP	Dev workflow
"Run linter before pushing"	KEEP	Affects how agent ships code
"Pipeline passed on retry"	DISCARD	CI/CD operational noise
"Assigned to @user for review"	DISCARD	Process management
"Moved to staging environment"	DISCARD	Deployment operations
"Updated the .gitlab-ci.yml timeout"	DISCARD	CI/CD configuration chatter

Edge cases: When a signal straddles both worlds (e.g., "update CI to run new test suite"), apply the litmus test strictly — does it change how an AI agent writes or ships code? If not, discard.

Display progress: "Retained N codebase-relevant findings (discarded M non-relevant signals)."

Phase 4: Build Findings Report

Choose the output path based on execution mode:

• Interactive: .claude/tmp/gitlab-mr-review-findings.md
• Non-interactive: .claude/reports/gitlab-mr-review-findings-YYYY-MM-DD.md (using today's date, timestamped for CI artifact upload)

Create the target directory if needed.

Report Structure

# GitLab MR Review Findings Report

**Project**: project_path
**Period**: YYYY-MM-DD to YYYY-MM-DD
**MRs analyzed**: N
**Comments collected**: N (after filtering)
**Actionable findings**: N
**Codebase-relevant findings**: N (of M high-relevance signals)

---

## Recurring Themes

### Theme: <label>
**Occurrences**: N across N MRs

| MR | File | Author | Comment |
|----|------|--------|---------|
| [!123](url) | path/to/file.ts | @author | Summary of comment |
| [!456](url) | path/to/other.ts | @author | Summary of comment |

**Suggested playbook action**: <Create standard | Update standard X | Create skill | ...>
**Rationale**: <Why this theme warrants a playbook change>

---

## Individual Findings

### Finding: <short description>
- **MR**: [!123](url)
- **File**: path/to/file.ts (if available from diff context)
- **Author**: @author
- **Comment**: Full comment text
- **Category**: convention | best-practice | bug-prevention
- **Suggested playbook action**: 

---

## Discarded Signals (non-relevant)

> Optional section for transparency. Lists signals that passed high-relevance classification but were filtered by the Codebase Relevance Gate.

| Signal summary | Reason discarded |
|---------------|-----------------|
|  |  |

URL Requirements

Every MR reference in the report MUST include the full, navigable GitLab URL (e.g., https://gitlab.com/namespace/project/-/merge_requests/123). This is critical because packmind-update-playbook extracts source URLs from the findings report for its packmind-cli diff --submit -m source attribution. The expected attribution format is:

<topic>: <summary> (source: MR !N https://gitlab.com/namespace/project/-/merge_requests/N, MR !M https://gitlab.com/namespace/project/-/merge_requests/M)

Use the web_url field returned by mcp__gitlab__get_merge_request for each MR. Never use placeholder (url) — always substitute the real URL.

Phase 5: Present and Hand Off

Interactive mode

1. Display a summary to the user:

   • Number of recurring themes found
   • Number of individual findings
   • List of suggested playbook actions

2. Ask the user:

   "Found N recurring themes and M individual findings. Review the full report at .claude/tmp/gitlab-mr-review-findings.md. Proceed to update the playbook with these findings?"

3. On confirm: Invoke the packmind-update-playbook skill with the full report content as the intent. This maps to Case B (explicit intent) of that skill's Phase 0. Frame the intent as:

   "Update the Packmind playbook based on the following GitLab MR review findings report: "

4. On decline: Inform the user the report is available at .claude/tmp/gitlab-mr-review-findings.md for manual review.

Non-interactive mode

1. Display a summary (same as interactive: themes count, findings count, suggested actions).

2. Log the report output path:

   "Report written to .claude/reports/gitlab-mr-review-findings-YYYY-MM-DD.md."

3. Invoke packmind-update-playbook with the full report content as the intent, passing along non-interactive mode. Frame the intent as:

   "Update the Packmind playbook based on the following GitLab MR review findings report: "

   The packmind-update-playbook skill will auto-approve all changes and delegate creation of new artifacts to the corresponding creation skills (packmind-create-standard, packmind-create-command, packmind-create-skill), all running in non-interactive mode.

Resources

references/

• gitlab-mcp-tools.md — GitLab MCP tool signatures and parameters used by this skill