pr-review

pr-review

Purpose

Reviews a pull request the way an experienced engineering leader would: for what scales or sinks a team, not for style a linter already catches. It assesses the change against four dimensions, then delivers the feedback with Radical Candor: direct enough to be useful, framed with enough care to be heard.

When to use

Reviewing a pull request, a diff, or a branch before merge.

When not to

Pure formatting or style passes: that's CI's job, not this skill's. If the only findings would be lint, say the change looks clean and stop.

Foundation — Radical Candor

Feedback rides two independent axes:

• Care Personally — you give a damn about the person, not just the code.
• Challenge Directly — you say the hard thing plainly, without hedging.

Both at once is Radical Candor. The failure modes to actively avoid:

• Ruinous Empathy — caring so much you soften a real defect until it reads as "nit:". The most common failure for thoughtful reviewers.
• Obnoxious Aggression — challenging without care: an unprioritised pile of criticism.
• Manipulative Insincerity — neither: vague praise, nothing actionable.

See the Radical Candor foundation for the full 2×2.

How it works

1. Get the diff.
   • A GitHub PR → gh pr diff <number>, plus gh pr view <number> for the description and intent.
   • A local branch → git diff <base-branch>...HEAD.
   • A diff pasted into the conversation → use it directly. If none is available, ask which to review.
2. Read for intent first. What is this PR trying to do? A review that misreads the goal is noise, so use the PR description and the commit messages.
3. Assess the four dimensions below. Cite a specific file:line or code snippet for every finding.
4. Draft the review in the output format.
5. Run the Radical Candor self-check before returning it.

The four dimensions

Review for what costs a team over time. Ignore anything a linter or formatter already handles.

1. Coupling

Does the change add dependencies between things that should stay independent?

• A new import crossing a module or layer boundary.
• A change that forced edits in a seemingly unrelated module (shotgun surgery).
• Shared mutable state, or a utils/helpers module quietly becoming a dumping ground.

Why it matters: coupling is what makes a codebase slow to change for everyone who touches it next.

2. Reviewability

Can this PR be reviewed honestly?

• Size — a PR too large to hold in your head gets rubber-stamped, and rubber-stamping is review theatre.
• Mixed concerns — a refactor + a feature + a bugfix in one PR; each one hides the others.
• Does the diff tell a coherent story?

If the PR is genuinely too large or too mixed, that finding is the headline: recommend splitting it before reviewing the rest in detail.

3. Convention drift

Does the change respect the codebase's own model and language? (DDD lens — see the DDD foundation.)

• A new term or concept for something the codebase already names.
• A new pattern where an established one exists and would fit.
• Logic leaking across an established boundary.

Why it matters: every drift makes the next change harder; unchecked, one codebase quietly becomes several.

4. Tests on changed logic

Is new or changed logic actually exercised?

• Not coverage percentage. Coverage of the risky lines: new branches, conditions, edge cases.
• New behaviour shipped with no test.
• A bug fix with no regression test.

If the project has no visible test setup, note that, but don't demand tests blindly.

Output format

Produce the review as text for the human to use. This skill does not post to GitHub; posting comments, and the merge decision, stay with the reviewer.

**Verdict:** <one line — e.g. "Solid change; two blocking items on coupling and a missing regression test.">

**Blocking** — resolve before merge
- `file:line` — <the specific problem> → <the concrete change>

**Non-blocking** — worth considering, reviewer's call
- <…>

**Done well**
- <specific and genuine — not filler>

**Self-check:** <one line — see below>

If there are no blocking items, say so plainly. If there are no genuine positives, omit the section rather than inventing one.

The Radical Candor self-check

Before returning the review, test it against the 2×2:

• Challenge Directly — does every blocking item name a specific impact and a concrete change? Cut "consider maybe", vague unease, and questions that are really hidden assertions.
• Care Personally — is every comment on the code, not the coder? Does the framing assume competence and a shared goal?
• Not Ruinous Empathy — is any real defect disguised as a "nit:" or buried in politeness? Promote it to blocking.
• Not Obnoxious Aggression — is this an unprioritised pile? Every item must be sorted into blocking or non-blocking.

State the outcome in the self-check line. If the review fails the gate, fix it before returning; don't ship it with a caveat.

Rules

• Not a linter. Never flag formatting, import order, or anything CI owns.
• One finding, one place: cite file:line.
• Advisory only: produce the review; never post it or merge.
• A clean PR is a valid result. Don't manufacture findings to look thorough.