Pr

PR Pipeline

The development flow is: branch off main → write code (discussing requirements with the maintainer) → self-review and fix → open the PR → watch CI and reviews until everything is handled → report that it is ready. The maintainer merges — never merge yourself.

Branch

• Always branch from freshly fetched origin/main — git fetch origin && git checkout -b <type>/<short-topic> origin/main — never from the local main. <type> uses the conventional-commit types, e.g. fix/queue-cancel, refactor/codec-macros.

Pre-push verification (every push, not just the first)

Never push anything unverified — "it compiles" is not verified, and CI is not a debugger.

1. pixi run format.
2. Both test suites pass locally (the test skill): unit tests via pixi run test (builds the debug preset and runs ctest, which handles the snapshot dir), and pixi run integration-test. Every failure on the branch is yours to fix now — even if it looks pre-existing (main is green), and never by skipping, disabling, or weakening the test.
3. Read results from a full log, not a pipe: cmd > /tmp/x.log 2>&1, then the exit code and the log tail (ninja: build stopped, FAILED, the suite summary). | tail reports tail's exit code (a failed build looks green), pipefail + | grep error fails when there is nothing to find. Before running a suite, check the test binary is newer than your last source edit — a "1362 passed" on a stale binary verifies nothing.
4. Long local runs (build, suites, codex) go through Bash run_in_background, which notifies on exit — not a detached script polled by timed wake-ups.
5. A platform failure you can reproduce locally is fixed locally. With a Windows checkout reachable from WSL, build and run the failing suite there before pushing; CI is not a debugger.

Pushing

git status -sb immediately before every push, then push with no arguments (upstream) or the branch name you just read. Never take the branch name from the session's start-of-conversation snapshot — it is stale after compaction, and a stale explicit name once resurrected a merged PR's deleted head branch (git push origin :<branch> undoes that).

Self-review (before opening)

Commit all work first — the review diff only sees commits, so a dirty worktree means the reviewer inspects an incomplete patch (git status must be clean). Then review the full diff (git diff origin/main...HEAD — never the local main, which goes stale) and fix everything confirmed before opening:

1. Primary: codex review (the codex skill) — the canonical rules-aware review command: plain codex exec with gpt-6-astra at xhigh and a prompt that reads .claude/CLAUDE.md plus the cpp-style skill and reviews git diff origin/main...HEAD (the built-in codex exec review --base cannot take a prompt, so it never sees the repo rules). Treat findings as hypotheses: verify each concrete claim before fixing it.
2. Supplement — when codex is unavailable, or as an extra pass on high-risk diffs: 3 parallel subagents reviewing independently — correctness (logic errors, edge cases, undefined behavior; coroutine lifetime and cancellation paths deserve extra suspicion), style (naming, cpp-style skill rules), tests (new functionality covered, no existing tests broken or weakened).

Opening

• Confirm with the maintainer before creating the PR.
• One PR is one complete, user-perceivable capability. Implementation stages order the work and isolate risk; they are commit layering, not PR boundaries — the maintainer reviews one capability at a time, not a chain of partial PRs.
• Title follows the conventional commit format — CI checks it, and it becomes the squash-merge commit on main.
• Body: a concise summary of what changed and why. Never reference local file paths, private notes, or other material a reader without this machine cannot see.
• After gh pr edit --body-file, read the body back and check its length: an API timeout in a gh pr view | gh pr edit chain writes an empty body. Never pipe the two in one command.
• An external contributor's PR gets its title and body rewritten before merge — the title is the squash commit, and the body must describe the post-review state, including fixes made on their behalf.

Watching

This is a sustained loop, not a single check — reviews and CI both take time, and a PR typically needs 5-6 rounds of check-and-fix before it is truly settled. Do not stop at the first green check.

• Cadence: one check every ~20 minutes by default, via timed wake-ups — never background shell loops. Tune to the situation: CI runs take their own time, and agent reviewers need a while to post after each push. Decide the total number of rounds yourself based on elapsed time and remaining activity.
• Every check covers all three: CI status, unresolved review threads, and the formal review decision. A green pipeline with open review comments is not done — review threads must be at zero before the maintainer merges. python3 .claude/skills/pr/scripts/info.py [N] prints the PR's state, merge status, review decision, check buckets (failing ones with links) and review load on one screen; comments.py prints the findings themselves.
• Bots also post findings in review bodies — the codex connector puts P2 findings there with blob permalinks, not as inline threads. comments.py lists both channels; when the maintainer reports a comment you cannot see as a thread, it is in a review body.
• Threads go through the resolve-comments skill: it pulls unresolved threads (by isResolved, never timestamps), applies root-cause fixes in the worktree, resolves the threads, and returns a compact summary — the GraphQL plumbing and comment bodies stay out of the main conversation. Threads are settled by resolving, not replying, and none stay open waiting for the maintainer: debatable points get the most defensible solution applied and recorded, batched into the final report.
• If resolve-comments left changes in the worktree: run the pre-push verification, then push an ordinary commit — never --amend, never force push. History rewrites destroy review anchors and reviewers' incremental diffs.
• Force push has essentially no legitimate use on a PR branch. The usual temptation — amending fixes into the previous commit to keep the branch "one tidy commit" — buys nothing: the squash merge flattens the branch anyway and only the PR title lands in main history. The single real case is rebasing onto a newer main (e.g. to resolve a conflict), and that requires asking the maintainer first.
• CI failure: reproduce and fix locally, verify, then push. Digest CI logs via a subagent; don't pull raw logs into the main conversation.
• Keep API calls sparse — one batch per check, sleep 1 between gh calls.

Done

• CI fully green, zero unresolved review threads, and no blocking review decision (reviewDecision must not be CHANGES_REQUESTED — a top-level "changes requested" review blocks the merge even after every inline thread is resolved; address its feedback and request a re-review) → report to the maintainer that the PR is ready to merge: a one-paragraph summary of what review found and how it was addressed, plus every design decision taken while resolving threads (chosen vs. alternative), so the maintainer can accept or overturn them in one pass. Then stop — merging is the maintainer's call.
• The default bar stays high: elegant code, edge cases considered. "Merge now, clean up in a dedicated refactor PR later" is a real move in this project, but that trade-off is the maintainer's call, made case by case — never the agent's default.