| name | review-pr |
| description | Review a GitHub pull request for correctness, security, observability, test coverage, and conventions. Identify applicable skills, verify and triage sub-agent findings to cut noise, score each review dimension purple-red-amber-green, and produce a structured review saved to disk and presented to the user. Use when user asks to review a PR, check a pull request, or give feedback on changes in a PR. |
| argument-hint | ["PR number or URL | empty to compare current branch to main/master"] |
Review PR
You are tasked with reviewing a GitHub pull request in the current repository. You will analyse the diff, check for issues across multiple dimensions, verify and triage the raw findings from the review sub-agents to cut noise, identify which skills were used during the review, assign a purple-red-amber-green score to each review dimension, and produce a structured review saved to disk and presented to the user.
Two rules that override everything else in this skill:
- Never auto-post to GitHub. Even when running non-interactively or in an "auto" mode, you MUST NOT post review comments to the PR without explicit sign-off from the user. See step 9. The only exception is when the user granted that sign-off up front when invoking the skill (e.g. "review PR 42 and post the comments").
- Verify before you report. Sub-agent findings are unverified. Every finding passes through the triage step (step 6) — you confirm it is true and worth raising before it reaches the review. This is how we keep out the noise.
Step 1: Check prerequisites
Verify that the GitHub CLI is available:
- Run
gh --version
- If
gh is not found: inform the user that gh (GitHub CLI) is required for this skill to work as expected and that without it you may not be able to perform the intended review. Ask the user explicitly whether they wish to continue regardless. If they decline, stop.
Step 2: Resolve the PR
If an argument was provided (PR number or URL):
- If the argument is a URL pointing to a different repository, respond with: "This skill only supports reviewing PRs in the current repository. Please switch to the relevant repo and try again." then stop.
- Otherwise, extract the PR number and proceed.
If no argument was provided:
- Run
gh pr view --json number,title,url 2>/dev/null to detect a PR from the current branch.
- If no PR is found, ask the user for a PR number.
Validate the PR exists: gh pr view {number} --json number,title,headRefName,baseRefName,url,body,author,state
Step 3: Gather PR metadata
Run the following to collect metadata:
gh pr view {number} --json number,title,headRefName,baseRefName,url,body,author,state,commits
Also collect:
- Latest commit hash on the PR branch:
gh pr view {number} --json commits --jq '.commits[-1].oid'
- Current date/time:
date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z'
- Repository name:
basename $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)
Store all metadata for use in step 8.
Step 4: Check for existing review
Determine the output path (see step 8 for naming convention) and check whether a review file for this PR number already exists:
- Search for files matching
{repo root}/.ai/review/*{pr-number}*
If an existing review is found:
- Read the file and extract the
last_reviewed_commit from the frontmatter
- Get the latest commit on the PR:
gh pr view {number} --json commits --jq '.commits[-1].oid'
- If
last_reviewed_commit equals the latest commit: inform the user the PR has already been reviewed up to the latest commit. Ask if they want a fresh review anyway. If not, stop.
- If they differ: this is a re-review. Note the
last_reviewed_commit so you can scope the diff in step 5 to only the new changes. You will update the existing file rather than creating a new one.
If no existing review is found: proceed normally (new review).
Step 5: Analyse the diff
Fetch the diff:
- New review:
gh pr diff {number}
- Re-review:
git diff {last_reviewed_commit}..{latest_commit} -- {files in PR} to get only new changes
Read project conventions:
- If they exist, read the repository's agent-instruction files for project-specific conventions, including
CLAUDE.md, AGENT.md, and analogous files such as .claude/CLAUDE.md, .copilot/copilot-instructions.md, or .pi/agent/AGENT.md
- Based on file types in the diff, identify relevant convention skills (e.g.
rust-test-conventions, rust-standards) and read their SKILL.md files for reference
- Keep a list of every skill consulted during the review so it can be included in the output document and final response. This should include
review-pr itself plus any project-specific convention or review skills used.
Spawn parallel sub-agents using the dedicated review agents, each focused on one review dimension:
- Correctness & logic — use the
correctness-reviewer agent. Pass it the diff.
- Security — use the
security-reviewer agent. Pass it the diff.
- Tests — use the
test-reviewer agent. Pass it the diff and any test convention references (e.g. rust-test-conventions).
- Style & conventions — use the
conventions-reviewer agent. Pass it the diff and all project convention references gathered above (for example CLAUDE.md, AGENT.md, .copilot/copilot-instructions.md, .pi/agent/AGENT.md, and language-specific convention skills).
- Observability — use the
observability-reviewer agent. Pass it the diff. This agent has basic OTel conventions embedded; also pass any project-specific telemetry conventions found above.
Each sub-agent prompt should include:
- The diff (or relevant portion)
- Any applicable convention references (gathered above)
- A reminder to return findings with file paths, line numbers, severity, and a recommended score with rationale
Treat every returned finding as an unverified candidate. The sub-agents are deliberately sensitive and over-report; you decide what is real in step 6.
Step 6: Verify and triage findings
The sub-agents over-report. Before anything reaches the review document, you (the main agent) must verify each candidate finding and cut the noise. This is the most important step for review quality — a review full of silly or wrong suggestions is worse than a short, sharp one.
For each candidate finding returned by the sub-agents:
- Confirm it is true. Open the referenced file and lines, read the surrounding context, and check the claim actually holds. Common failure modes to catch: the finding misreads the code, the "missing" handling already exists elsewhere, the concern is already covered by a test or a type, or the suggestion contradicts a project convention.
- Decide its fate:
- Discard it if it is false, speculative, already handled, or a trivial nit that does not genuinely matter (be ruthless — most discarded findings will be low-severity ones).
- Rephrase it if the underlying concern is real but the wording is vague, overstated, or misdiagnosed. State the real issue plainly and constructively.
- Keep it as-is if it is correct and clearly worth raising.
- Assign a final tier (see the four-tier scale in step 7). The sub-agents only recommended red/amber/green and tend to over-use amber; you make the real call, including whether something is a purple blocker.
You may spawn sub-agents to help verify when it is more efficient — for example, one verification agent per dimension, or a single agent to re-check a batch of borderline findings. Give each the specific findings, the diff, and instructions to report back which findings it could confirm against the actual code, which it could not, and why. You remain responsible for the final decision.
Only findings that survive triage proceed to scoring and the review document.
Step 7: Score each review dimension
After triage, assign a purple-red-amber-green score to each review dimension and prepare a short rationale for each score.
Review dimensions to score:
- Correctness & logic
- Security
- Tests
- Style & conventions
- Observability
Four-tier severity scale (applies to individual findings and to dimension scores):
- 🟣 Purple (Blocker): a fatal issue — the PR must not be merged until it is fixed. Data loss or corruption, a security hole, a crash or broken core path, a breaking change shipped unintentionally. Reserve this for issues that genuinely stop the merge.
- 🔴 Red (Important): a significant issue that should be fixed before merge but is not fatal — a real bug on a non-critical path, a meaningful gap in error handling, a missing test for important behaviour. This is where the more important findings that used to be lumped into amber now live.
- 🟠 Amber (Minor): a real but less important finding — nice to fix, does not block merge. Convention nits such as incorrect naming, small readability improvements, minor observability gaps.
- 🟢 Green: no issues found, or only trivial observations.
The dimension score is the highest tier among that dimension's surviving findings. Do not inflate: reserve purple for true blockers, and do not push a genuine minor nit up to red just because it is the only finding.
Capture these scores for both the review document and the agent's final response to the user.
Step 8: Write review to disk
Output location:
{repo root}/.ai/review/{yyyy-mm-dd} {pr-number} {pr-title-abbreviated}.md
Where:
{yyyy-mm-dd} is today's date{pr-number} is the PR number (e.g. 42){pr-title-abbreviated} is the PR title in kebab-case, truncated to max 50 characters (trim at word boundary)- If the
.ai/review/ folder does not exist, create it
For a re-review, update the existing file rather than creating a new one.
Document structure:
---
pr_number: "{number}"
pr_title: "{title}"
pr_url: "{url}"
pr_author: "{author}"
pr_branch: "{headRefName}"
base_branch: "{baseRefName}"
repository: "{repo name}"
first_reviewed: "{yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM:SS TZ}"
last_reviewed: "{yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM:SS TZ}"
last_reviewed_commit: "{latest commit hash on PR branch}"
---
# PR Review: {title} (#{number})
## Summary
[2-3 sentence high-level assessment of the PR]
## Review Dimension Scores
| Dimension | Score | Rationale |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | ----------------- |
| Correctness & logic | {🟣 Blocker / 🔴 Red / 🟠 Amber / 🟢 Green} | {brief rationale} |
| Security | {🟣 Blocker / 🔴 Red / 🟠 Amber / 🟢 Green} | {brief rationale} |
| Observability | {🟣 Blocker / 🔴 Red / 🟠 Amber / 🟢 Green} | {brief rationale} |
| Tests | {🟣 Blocker / 🔴 Red / 🟠 Amber / 🟢 Green} | {brief rationale} |
| Style & conventions | {🟣 Blocker / 🔴 Red / 🟠 Amber / 🟢 Green} | {brief rationale} |
## Skills Used For This Review
- `review-pr`
- `{skill-name}`
- `{skill-name}`
## Review Dimension: Correctness & Logic
[Findings related to bugs, edge cases, error handling, race conditions, or incorrect assumptions]
[Prefix each finding with severity and status: e.g. `🟣 **[New]**`, `🔴 **[New]**`, `🟠 **[Unresolved]**`, `🟢 **[Resolved]**`]
[List most important first.]
[If none: "No correctness or logic issues found."]
## Review Dimension: Security
[Findings related to auth/authz, injection, secret handling, unsafe defaults, or other security risks]
[Prefix each finding with severity and status: e.g. `🟣 **[New]**`, `🔴 **[New]**`, `🟠 **[Unresolved]**`, `🟢 **[Resolved]**`]
[List most important first.]
[If none: "No security issues found."]
## Review Dimension: Tests
[Findings related to missing coverage, missing edge cases, weak assertions, or test quality]
[Prefix each finding with severity and status: e.g. `🟣 **[New]**`, `🔴 **[New]**`, `🟠 **[Unresolved]**`, `🟢 **[Resolved]**`]
[List most important first.]
[If none: "No meaningful test gaps found."]
## Review Dimension: Style & Conventions
[Findings related to naming, structure, patterns, formatting, or project-specific conventions]
[Prefix each finding with severity and status: e.g. `🟣 **[New]**`, `🔴 **[New]**`, `🟠 **[Unresolved]**`, `🟢 **[Resolved]**`]
[List most important first.]
[If none: "No style or convention issues found."]
## Review Dimension: Observability
[Specific telemetry recommendations — spans, attributes, metrics, log lines worth adding]
[Prefix each finding with severity and status: e.g. `🟣 **[New]**`, `🔴 **[New]**`, `🟠 **[Unresolved]**`, `🟢 **[Resolved]**`]
[List most important first.]
[If none: "Telemetry coverage looks adequate."]
## Review History
| Date | Commit | Type | Notes |
| ------ | ------------ | ---------- | -------------- |
| {date} | {short hash} | New review | Initial review |
For a re-review, append a new row to the Review History table and update findings:
- Reassess every existing finding that is not already resolved:
- If the issue has been addressed in the new commits, change its status to
{severity} **[Resolved]**
- If the issue persists, change its status from
[New] to [Unresolved]
- Add net-new findings with status
[New] under each relevant section
- On initial reviews all findings use the
[New] status tag
- Recalculate dimension scores based on unresolved findings only — resolved findings do not count
- Update the score table and score rationales so they reflect the latest overall state of the PR
- Update the
last_reviewed and last_reviewed_commit frontmatter fields
- Update the
skills_used list if additional skills were consulted during the re-review
- Do NOT remove previous findings — they serve as a record
Step 9: Present findings
Present a concise summary to the user:
- Count of findings by severity and by review dimension
- A purple-red-amber-green summary for each review dimension
- The list of skills used for the review
- The most important findings (blockers first, then red)
- Path to the review file on disk
Ask if they would like to:
- Discuss any specific finding
- Post review comments on the PR via GitHub
Posting to GitHub requires explicit user sign-off — no exceptions:
- Do NOT post anything to the PR unless the user has explicitly asked you to. This holds even when you are running non-interactively or in an "auto" / autonomous mode: writing the review to disk is always allowed, posting to GitHub is not. Producing the review is not permission to publish it.
- The one way this sign-off can be given up front is at invocation — if the user asked for posting when they invoked the skill (e.g. "review PR 42 and post the comments"), that counts as sign-off and you may post without asking again.
- In every other case, stop after presenting and wait for the user to tell you to post. If in doubt, do not post.
If (and only if) the user has signed off, post the comments:
- Use
gh pr review {number} with appropriate flags
- Never use
--request-changes, even when there are blocker or critical issues — always use --comment
- Include the dimension score summary in the review body you post
- Do not reference the markdown file you created in the local repository because it is not intended to be pushed to the remote repository
- End the review body with a separator and attribution line:
--- followed by This review was generated by {agent} {model}. where {agent} is the tool being used (e.g. Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Pi) and {model} is the model name and version (e.g. Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.5)
Important notes
- Only review PRs in the current repository — reject cross-repo URLs
- Never modify the PR branch or push code as part of this skill
- Never post review comments to the PR without explicit user sign-off, even in an auto/autonomous mode (see step 9); sign-off given at invocation counts
- Verify every sub-agent finding against the real code before reporting it (step 6) — discard the false and the trivial; a short accurate review beats a long noisy one
- Be constructive — frame findings as questions or suggestions, not demands
- Be sparing with nits — only flag patterns that genuinely matter
- Include file paths and line numbers for every finding
- For re-reviews, focus only on new/changed code since last review
- Follow step ordering strictly: prerequisites -> resolve -> metadata -> check existing -> analyse -> verify & triage -> score -> write -> present
