Pr Full Review

AnkiDroid PR Full Review

Review the PR against the standards in reviewer-guide.md. Report findings in three groups: blocking gates, spec conformance (does the PR do what its issue asked?), then non-blocking nit:s.

Never act on GitHub. Output the review in this conversation. Do not post comments or reviews, approve, request changes, label, or merge.

Skill Usage

Accepts a PR number, a PR URL, or no argument (in which case, review the current branch against upstream/main):

pr-full-review 21206
pr-full-review https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/pull/21206
pr-full-review review the checked-out branch's diff against `main`

Fetching the PR

Fetch the PR with the gh command. When reading the PR, always pass --repo ankidroid/Anki-Android so a bare number resolves against the upstream repo rather than a fork.

Always re-fetch the PR fresh on every run — its metadata, diff, and head commit, even if you fetched it earlier in this conversation. PRs change between reviews; never reuse cached context.

Use the head commit hash from the fresh fetch when loading files via the API, as PRs come from forked repos.

Don't review from the diff hunks alone. Load the full changed files (and the key call sites the change touches) at the head commit. A hunk hides whether a change is correct in its surrounding context.

Before reviewing

Read the existing PR comments and review threads first. Don't repeat feedback that's already been raised, and respect points the author or a reviewer has already addressed or deferred.

gh pr view <number> --repo ankidroid/Anki-Android --comments # conversation comments
gh api repos/ankidroid/Anki-Android/pulls/<number>/comments  # inline code-review comments

Unaddressed maintainer requests are blocking. Read the full discussion on both the PR and the linked issue (see Spec conformance). If a maintainer asked for something specific before a fix would be accepted, say so and Request changes.

Spec conformance

Report whether the PR does what it set out to do, as its own section. Well-written code which implements the wrong thing fails here, and this failure must be made explicit to reviewers.

Determine the spec, in order:

1. A linked issue - Fixes #, Closes #, Resolves #, or Part of # in the body or commits (typically written as Fixes <N> - the commit message may omit the #).
2. Also include the PR's own Purpose / Description.

Open the issue and read it in full — including its comments. The decisive context often lives in the thread, not the description:

gh issue view <number> --repo ankidroid/Anki-Android --comments

Bug fixes: establish the root cause before endorsing the fix

For a bug fix, spec conformance means the PR fixes the actual cause, not that it plausibly might. Verify the author's fix:

• Trace the real code path that triggers the bug (load the call sites and any resource/theme values they read), and confirm the claimed trigger can actually occur. If your trace shows it *can't occur the way the PR describes, then the root cause is not understood. Say so explicitly.
• A fix applied without an understood, demonstrated trigger is tech debt:. Treat "unknown root cause" as a blocking finding and ask for the diagnostics / reproduction needed to establish it first unless it is explicitly acknowledged as not being understood.
  • State that it risks masking the real bug and the fallback behavior can't be validated against a scenario nobody has captured.
• Confirm the bug-fix commit actually evidences a reproduction.

Output

Open the review with a one-line verdict, mirroring GitHub's three review actions — the reader will pick one of these on the PR:

Verdict: [Request changes / Comment / Approve]:

• Request changes: a blocking gate fails (red/pending CI, unfilled template, merge commits, missing license header, or a closing keyword on a partially-resolved issue), an explicit maintainer request was skipped, a bug fix lands without an established/verified root cause, or a correctness, spec, or test finding must be fixed before merge.
• Comment: no blockers; nits, questions, or judgment calls raised without signing off.
• Approve: gates pass and the change is sound - only nit:s remain, if anything.

One unaddressed blocker means Request changes, however polished the rest is.

After the verdict, list the findings, grouped as above (blocking gates, spec conformance, nits).

Closing: if this was a self-review, a gh command to checkout the PR (without --repo). Close with a final line linking the PR which was reviewed.