| name | review |
| description | Reviews a pull request for code quality and correctness. Use when asked to review a PR or when running as an automated PR reviewer. |
| argument-hint | [PR number] |
| metadata | {"internal":true} |
PR Review
Review a pull request.
PR to review: $ARGUMENTS
Workflow
Follow these steps in order.
0. Load environment skills
Load /tend-ci-runner:running-in-ci first — it contains CI security rules, polling conventions, and comment formatting guidance. It will also prompt you to load any repo-specific skills (e.g., running-tend).
1. Pre-flight checks
Before reading the diff, run cheap checks to avoid redundant work. Shell state doesn't persist between tool calls — re-derive REPO in each bash invocation or combine commands.
REPO=$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner --jq '.nameWithOwner')
BOT_LOGIN=$(gh api user --jq '.login')
HEAD_SHA=$(gh pr view <number> --json commits --jq '.commits[-1].oid')
PR_AUTHOR=$(gh pr view <number> --json author --jq '.author.login')
IS_DRAFT=$(gh pr view <number> --json isDraft --jq '.isDraft')
EVENT_ACTION=$(jq -r '.action // ""' < "${GITHUB_EVENT_PATH:-/dev/null}" 2>/dev/null)
LAST_REVIEW_SHA=$(gh pr view <number> --json reviews \
--jq "[.reviews[] | select(.author.login == \"$BOT_LOGIN\")] | last | .commit.oid // empty")
If LAST_REVIEW_SHA == HEAD_SHA, this commit has already been reviewed — exit silently. Two exceptions: an unanswered conversation question directed at the bot (check below), or EVENT_ACTION == "ready_for_review" (the PR just transitioned out of draft, so any prior review was a draft-mode review and the author is now asking for a full one — proceed).
If the bot reviewed a previous commit (LAST_REVIEW_SHA exists but differs from HEAD_SHA), judge what was pushed since. Read two signals, both leak-free against base-merges:
- The PR's three-dot diff —
gh pr diff <number> (merge-base→head, the same diff step 3 uses) — for the current state. Base-merge commits never enter it.
- The accurate incremental — commits authored since the last review, with per-file line counts — for the trivial-skip decision below.
BASE_SHA=$(gh pr view <number> --json baseRefOid --jq '.baseRefOid')
git fetch --no-tags --quiet origin "$BASE_SHA" 2>/dev/null || true
git log --no-merges --numstat --format='%h %s' "$LAST_REVIEW_SHA..$HEAD_SHA" --not "$BASE_SHA"
If the incremental changes are trivial, skip the full review — go directly to step 7 to resolve any bot threads addressed by the new changes. After resolving threads: if the most recent bot review was a COMMENT that flagged issues, and those issues are now addressed, submit an APPROVE with an empty body so the PR isn't left in limbo. Otherwise do not submit a new review — the existing one stands. Do NOT proceed to steps 2–6. Rough heuristic: changes under ~20 added+deleted lines that don't introduce new functions, types, or control flow are typically trivial.
Commit and PR authorship do not affect review behavior. Apply the same trivial-vs-substantive heuristic regardless of who pushed the new commits. When tend-notifications or tend-ci-fix pushes a fix to a human-authored PR, reviewing (and re-approving) the updated state is expected — the reviewer role is independent of commit authorship.
Then read all previous bot feedback and conversation:
BOT_LOGIN=$(gh api user --jq '.login')
gh pr view <number> --json comments,reviews \
--jq "{prev_reviews: [.reviews[] | select(.author.login == \"$BOT_LOGIN\"
and (.body | length > 0)) | {state, body}],
conversation: [.comments[] | {author: .author.login, body}]}"
cat > /tmp/inline-prev.graphql <<'GRAPHQL'
query($owner:String!,$repo:String!,$number:Int!) {
repository(owner:$owner,name:$repo) {
pullRequest(number:$number) {
reviewThreads(first:100) {
nodes { comments(first:100) { nodes {
author { login } path line body
} } }
}
}
}
}
GRAPHQL
REPO=$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner --jq '.nameWithOwner')
OWNER=${REPO%/*}; NAME=${REPO#*/}
gh api graphql -F query=@/tmp/inline-prev.graphql -f owner="$OWNER" -f repo="$NAME" -F number=<number> \
--jq ".data.repository.pullRequest.reviewThreads.nodes[].comments.nodes[]
| select(.author.login == \"$BOT_LOGIN\")
| {path, line, body}"
Apply the sibling-workflow dedup rule from running-in-ci to both the review body and inline comments. If a prior bot comment in the conversation already covers a point — a previous review on this or an earlier commit, a tend-mention reply, a tend-triage post, anything from a tend workflow — omit it from this review and stick to diff-grounded findings. If that leaves no new diff-grounded finding on the incremental changes and the only outstanding concern is a still-unresolved thread from an earlier bot review, do not post a new review: that thread already blocks the PR, and restating "the prior thread still applies" on every push is noise. Resolve any bot threads the new commits addressed (step 7), then exit without posting. A fresh review is warranted only when the incremental diff introduces a new finding, or resolves the last open one (then approve with an empty body). When concurrent runs race (a new push while the first run is still responding), both see the same unanswered question — check whether a bot reply exists after the question's timestamp before answering. Address remaining unanswered questions in the review body (not via gh pr comment).
Draft mode
If IS_DRAFT == "true", run a lighter review:
- Skip step 2 (overlap with other PRs) — landing-readiness concern, premature for WIP.
- Skip the duplication scan in step 4 — the author is still shaping the design.
- Submit as COMMENT only, never APPROVE. GitHub blocks approving drafts, and the author hasn't asked for a verdict yet.
- Open the review body with one line framing it:
Reviewing as a draft — flagging anything that looks worth a quick fix. Mark ready for a full review.
- Skip step 6 (CI monitoring) — drafts churn; CI failures are the author's to chase.
- Skip step 8 (push fixes) — never push to a WIP branch.
Steps 1, 3, 4 (without duplication scan), 5 (COMMENT path), and 7 still apply. Stay silent if there's nothing actionable; don't post a "looks fine" comment.
2. Check for overlapping PRs
Before reading the diff, scan other open PRs for file overlap. If another PR touches the same files with a similar fix, flag it in the review so one can be closed as a duplicate.
3. Read and understand the change
- Read the PR diff with
gh pr diff <number>.
- Before going deeper, look at the PR as a reader would — not just the code, but the shape: what files are being added/changed, and does anything look off?
- Read the changed files in full (not just the diff) to understand context.
4. Review
Scale depth to the change. A docs-only PR or a mechanical rename needs a skim for correctness, not the full checklist. A new algorithm or state-management change needs trace analysis. Don't over-analyze trivial changes.
Check the project's CLAUDE.md for language-specific review criteria and conventions. Load any project-specific review skill if available.
Review the diff two ways at once: the manual checks below, plus a /code-review over it (Claude harness only; the Codex harness lacks the command, so skip it there). /code-review is a Claude Code built-in that reviews the working-tree diff (here, the PR's merged tree) for correctness bugs and cleanups. Scale its effort tier to how core the change is, the same way you scale the manual depth above:
- Peripheral or mechanical (docs, config, dependency bumps, test-only):
/code-review low or medium.
- The project's core logic:
/code-review high or max.
What counts as core is repo-specific; let the project's own guidance (CLAUDE.md, a repo review skill) or your judgment decide. Skip ultra (the human-triggered cloud pass). Both passes feed one verdict: fold the /code-review findings into the review you submit in step 5, and don't pass --comment or --fix, which act outside the dedup and single-review path.
Code quality:
- Is the code clear and well-structured?
- Are there simpler ways to express the same logic?
- Does it avoid unnecessary complexity, feature flags, or compatibility layers?
Correctness:
- Are there edge cases that aren't handled?
- Could the changes break existing functionality?
- Are error messages helpful and consistent with the project style?
- Trace failure paths, don't just note error handling exists. For code that modifies state through multiple fallible steps, walk through what happens when each error fires. What has already been mutated? Is the system left in a recoverable state?
Testing:
- Are the changes adequately tested?
Same pattern elsewhere:
When a PR fixes a bug or changes a pattern, search for the same pattern in other files. If found in the diff, add inline suggestions; if found outside the diff, offer to push a fix commit.
Citing code outside the diff:
The checkout uses refs/pull/N/merge, so you read the merged tree (PR head + current base branch). When a finding involves code outside gh pr diff — code the PR didn't touch but now interacts with — identify the interacting code by semantic anchor (selector, function name, declaration text) and quote enough of the relevant property/value that the reader can grep for it. Don't lead with the line number: the author's local branch may be behind main, so line numbers from the merged tree won't match their checkout, and a line-number-first citation reads as a hallucination when they check the line on their stale branch. Same principle as the blob/main/...#L42 link rule in running-in-ci — line numbers are fragile across diverging refs.
Duplication check (for new functions/types):
For every new public or module-level function added in the diff, search the codebase for existing functions that do the same thing. LLM-generated code frequently reinvents internal APIs — this is the highest-value check for externally contributed PRs.
Two search strategies, both required:
- Similar names and signatures. Search for functions with similar names, return types, or parameter types.
- Overlapping subgoals. Identify the intermediate steps the new code performs and search for existing code that does the same sub-tasks.
Flag duplicates — reuse is almost always better than a parallel implementation.
5. Submit
If there are no issues, approve with an empty body — silence means correct.
gh pr review <number> --approve -b "" && echo "✓ approved"
If there are actionable findings, submit as a review with inline suggestions for concrete fixes. Every comment must give the author something to act on:
| Don't post (internal analysis) | Post (actionable) |
|---|
| "The fix correctly delegates to X" | "The error message still references the old behavior" |
| "The threshold logic is correct" | (nothing — silence means correct) |
Don't explain what the code does — the author wrote it. Don't nitpick formatting — that's what linters are for. Explain why something should change, not just what.
Form your own opinion independently. Do not factor in other reviewers' comments or approvals when deciding whether to approve — the value of this review is as an uncorrelated signal.
When confidence is low, go beyond checking the implementation — question the approach: "Does this bypass or duplicate an existing API?" "What does this change not handle?" If the design involves a judgment call, flag it for human review as a COMMENT.
Self-authored PRs (PR_AUTHOR == BOT_LOGIN — compare the literal bot login string, not "authored by someone senior" or "by the repo owner"): Still perform the full review (steps 2-3) — self-review catches real issues (lint failures, edge cases) and is intentionally valuable. Do NOT attempt gh pr review --approve — GitHub rejects self-approvals. Submit as COMMENT when there are concerns, or stay silent and skip to step 6. Always post CI failure analysis as a COMMENT, even on self-authored PRs.
Not confident enough to approve (unfamiliar module, subtle logic): Add a +1 reaction instead — no review needed unless there are specific observations.
gh api "repos/$REPO/issues/<number>/reactions" -f content="+1"
Posting mechanics
Before posting, verify HEAD hasn't moved, the PR is still open, and no review was already posted for this commit:
REPO=$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner --jq '.nameWithOwner')
BOT_LOGIN=$(gh api user --jq '.login')
read -r CURRENT_HEAD PR_STATE < <(gh pr view <number> --json commits,state \
--jq '"\(.commits[-1].oid) \(.state)"')
[ "$CURRENT_HEAD" != "$HEAD_SHA" ] && echo "HEAD moved — skipping" && exit 0
[ "$PR_STATE" != "OPEN" ] && echo "PR is $PR_STATE — skipping" && exit 0
ALREADY_POSTED=$(gh api "repos/$REPO/pulls/<number>/reviews" \
--jq "[.[] | select(.user.login == \"$BOT_LOGIN\" and .commit_id == \"$HEAD_SHA\")] | last | .submitted_at // empty")
[ -n "$ALREADY_POSTED" ] && echo "Already reviewed — skipping" && exit 0
The state check matters because the maintainer may close (or another path may merge) the PR while a review is in flight — pull_request_target reviews routinely run for 5–10 minutes between fetching HEAD_SHA and posting the verdict, and HEAD doesn't move when the PR is closed. Approving a CLOSED or MERGED PR creates a confusing artifact (an approval timestamped after the close).
Before APPROVE specifically, also peek the current check rollup on HEAD_SHA. If any check has reached terminal FAILURE, do not emit an empty-body APPROVE — the close-out reads as the bot rubber-stamping over the visibly red signal:
FAILED=$(gh pr view <number> --json statusCheckRollup \
--jq '[.statusCheckRollup[]
| select((.conclusion // .state) == "FAILURE")
| .name // .context // "unknown"] | join(", ")')
if [ -n "$FAILED" ]; then
echo "Skipping APPROVE — failing checks present on $HEAD_SHA: $FAILED"
exit 0
fi
Step 6's "approve, foreground-poll CI, dismiss if a check fails" pattern only recovers while the session is still alive — the job timeout or a poll cap can leave a post-approve failure undismissed and the PR carrying a misleading APPROVED state. A synchronous pre-APPROVE peek catches the case where the failure is already in the rollup — including non-required checks like codecov/patch that an overlay treats as a merge gate. If a failure is present, skip the close-out entirely; any earlier substantive bot review (e.g. a COMMENT with inline suggestions) remains the active verdict until the author addresses it.
Post at most one review per run. Give a verdict (approve or comment, never "request changes") when this run has something to say: a new diff-grounded finding, or an approval because the last open concern is now resolved. If the dedup rule above left nothing new and a prior unresolved bot thread still stands, post nothing; the earlier review remains the active verdict. Use gh pr review for reviews, not gh pr comment. Note: --comment requires a non-empty body — if there's nothing to say and no prior concern stands, use the approve-with-empty-body pattern.
Inline suggestions are mandatory for concrete fixes. Whenever there's a concrete fix (typos, doc updates, naming, missing imports, minor refactors, test additions), post it as an inline suggestion on the exact line — never as a code block in the review body. Inline suggestions let the author apply with one click; code blocks force them to find the line and copy-paste manually.
For fixes targeting lines outside the diff, offer to push a fix commit instead.
Post inline suggestions via the review API:
cat > /tmp/review-body.md << 'EOF'
Summary of suggestions
EOF
cat > /tmp/review-payload.json << 'ENDJSON'
{
"event": "COMMENT",
"comments": [
{
"path": "example/file.txt",
"line": 3,
"body": "```suggestion\nnew text here\n```"
}
]
}
ENDJSON
BODY=$(cat /tmp/review-body.md)
jq --arg body "$BODY" '.body = $body' /tmp/review-payload.json > /tmp/review-final.json
gh api "repos/$REPO/pulls/<number>/reviews" \
--method POST \
--input /tmp/review-final.json
Do not use -f 'comments[0][path]=...' flag syntax — gh api converts array indices to object keys, which GitHub rejects.
-
If a review has both suggestions and prose observations, put the suggestions as inline comments and the prose in the review body.
-
Multi-line suggestions: set start_line and line to define the range. GitHub replaces every line in that range with the suggestion content — any line in the range that isn't reproduced in the replacement is deleted.
Before posting any multi-line suggestion, verify it:
- Read the exact lines
start_line through line from the diff hunk.
- Diff mentally: every line in that range must either appear (possibly modified) in the replacement text, or be a line you intend to delete. If any line would be silently dropped, shrink the range or include the line in the replacement.
- Cap the range at ~10 lines. Larger suggestions are error-prone and hard to review. For changes spanning more than 10 lines, split into multiple suggestions or push a fix commit instead.
- Never span markdown fences. If the range includes a
``` line, GitHub's suggestion parser may consume it as a delimiter, corrupting the result. Either shrink the range to avoid the fence or push a commit.
Recovering from inline comment 422 errors
GitHub returns 422 Unprocessable Entity with "Line could not be resolved" when inline comment line numbers don't map to valid positions in the diff. Two failure modes produce the same error message but differ in whether a review record is persisted:
- (a) Large / complex diff: the body is persisted first, then the inline comments are rejected — leaving an orphan body-only review on the PR. A blind retry creates a duplicate.
- (b) Line outside the diff entirely: the entire POST is rejected up front — no review is persisted. Retrying without inline comments is correct; editing a non-existent review will fail.
Check which case you are in before deciding how to recover — query for an orphan review on the current HEAD first, then branch on the result.
ORPHAN_ID=$(gh api "repos/$REPO/pulls/<number>/reviews" \
--jq "[.[] | select(.user.login == \"$BOT_LOGIN\" and .commit_id == \"$HEAD_SHA\")] | last | .id // empty")
Then, in either case, move the failed inline comments into the review body as fenced code blocks with file paths, and:
-
If ORPHAN_ID is non-empty (case a): edit the existing review instead of creating a duplicate.
gh api "repos/$REPO/pulls/<number>/reviews/$ORPHAN_ID" \
-X PUT -F body=@/tmp/updated-review-body.md
If the edit itself fails, do not post another review — the body-only review is sufficient.
-
If ORPHAN_ID is empty (case b): retry the POST with comments omitted (body-only), since no duplicate is possible.
Prevention: before writing any inline comment, verify the target line falls inside one of the PR's diff hunks. For fixes outside the diff, use the "push a fix commit" path instead of an inline suggestion (see above).
6. Monitor CI
If you stayed silent (no review posted, nothing to dismiss), end the session — there's no follow-up gated on the CI result. Don't background-poll: per /tend-ci-runner:running-in-ci under "End the turn only when work is shipped", the completion notification isn't reliably delivered to a CI session.
If you approved, the dismissal-on-failure is a gated follow-up. Foreground-poll using the recipe in /tend-ci-runner:running-in-ci under "CI Monitoring" (don't use run_in_background).
Then handle the outcome:
7. Resolve handled suggestions
After submitting the review, check if any unresolved bot threads have been addressed by the new changes. Resolve threads where the suggestion was applied.
Only resolve if the substance was addressed. Read both the suggestion and the new code — if the author took a different approach, verify its technical accuracy before resolving. "Different wording" is not "addressed" when the new wording is less accurate than the suggestion. When in doubt, leave the thread open for a human reviewer.
Self-authored PRs are especially risky. When the bot is both author and reviewer, there is a bias toward accepting the code's own claims. Treat self-authored thread resolution with extra skepticism — read the code and verify the claim independently rather than trusting the doc comment or commit message.
cat > /tmp/review-threads.graphql << 'GRAPHQL'
query($owner: String!, $repo: String!, $number: Int!) {
repository(owner: $owner, name: $repo) {
pullRequest(number: $number) {
reviewThreads(first: 100) {
nodes {
id
isResolved
comments(first: 1) {
nodes {
author { login }
path
line
body
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
GRAPHQL
REPO=$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner --jq '.nameWithOwner')
BOT_LOGIN=$(gh api user --jq '.login')
OWNER=$(echo "$REPO" | cut -d/ -f1)
NAME=$(echo "$REPO" | cut -d/ -f2)
gh api graphql -F query=@/tmp/review-threads.graphql \
-f owner="$OWNER" -f repo="$NAME" -F number=<number> \
| jq --arg bot "$BOT_LOGIN" '
.data.repository.pullRequest.reviewThreads.nodes[]
| select(.isResolved == false)
| select(.comments.nodes[0].author.login == $bot)
| {id, path: .comments.nodes[0].path, line: .comments.nodes[0].line, body: .comments.nodes[0].body}'
cat > /tmp/resolve-thread.graphql << 'GRAPHQL'
mutation($threadId: ID!) {
resolveReviewThread(input: {threadId: $threadId}) {
thread { id }
}
}
GRAPHQL
gh api graphql -F query=@/tmp/resolve-thread.graphql -f threadId="THREAD_ID"
Outdated comments (null line) are best-effort — skip if the original context can't be located.
8. Push fixes
Bot PRs (Dependabot, renovate, etc.): There is no human author to act on feedback, so a review that only describes the fix leaves the PR red and pushes the work onto a maintainer — the opposite of the point. If you can articulate the fix, apply it: commit and push it to the PR branch. "Not a one-token change" and "more than one syntactically valid form exists" are not reasons to defer — pick the option most consistent with the surrounding code and the repo's existing conventions, push it, and note any alternative in the review. The only bar for deferring is that no defensible default exists: a genuine semantic ambiguity that needs maintainer intent, not merely a fix that took thought to derive. If the review already worked out the answer, that answer is pushable. Rebase onto the latest target branch first if the branch is behind.
Human PRs: Post inline suggestions first. Additionally, offer to push a commit when the fixes are mechanical and correctness is obvious. Only push after the author accepts.
gh pr checkout <number>
git add <files>
git commit -m "fix: <description>"
git push
