Managing Phabricator

Managing Phabricator

Overview

Manage Phabricator Differential code review workflows, including revision management, Herald rules for automation, reviewer policies, and audit configuration.

Key Capabilities

• Manage Differential revisions and review workflows
• Configure Herald rules for automated reviewer assignment and actions
• Set up audit rules for post-commit review
• Define reviewer policies and blocking reviewers
• Configure repository-level review requirements
• Manage review groups and project-based reviewer pools

Workflow

1 — Differential Review Setup

DIFFERENTIAL CONFIGURATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Review status flow:
    Needs Review -> Accepted / Needs Revision
    Needs Revision -> Needs Review (after update)
    Accepted -> Closed (after landing)
[ ] Blocking reviewers: YES / NO
[ ] Accept with comments allowed: YES / NO
[ ] Require test plan: YES / NO
[ ] Auto-close revisions on push: YES / NO

2 — Herald Rules

HERALD AUTOMATION RULES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rule: Security File Review
  When: Differential revision is created
  If: Changed file path matches /src/auth/**
  Action: Add reviewer @security-team (blocking)
  Action: Add subscriber @security-leads

Rule: Large Diff Warning
  When: Differential revision is created
  If: Diff size > 500 lines
  Action: Add comment "Large diff - consider splitting"
  Action: Add reviewer @senior-engineers

Rule: Database Changes
  When: Differential revision is created
  If: Changed file matches *.sql OR migrations/**
  Action: Add reviewer @dba-team (blocking)
  Action: Flag for special attention

3 — Audit Configuration

AUDIT RULES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Post-commit audit rules:
    - All commits to main: audit by @tech-leads
    - Commits without review: audit by @engineering-managers
    - Commits by new engineers: audit by @mentors
[ ] Audit status tracking: concern-raised / accepted
[ ] Audit response SLA: ___ hours

Common Operations

List Pending Revisions

Query open Differential revisions awaiting review action.

Herald Rule Testing

Test Herald rules against sample revisions to validate behavior.

Audit Compliance

Track post-commit audits and ensure timely responses.

Troubleshooting

Output Format

Present results as a structured report:

Managing Phabricator Report
═══════════════════════════
Resources discovered: [count]

Resource       Status    Key Metric    Issues
──────────────────────────────────────────────
[name]         [ok/warn] [value]       [findings]

Summary: [total] resources | [ok] healthy | [warn] warnings | [crit] critical
Action Items: [list of prioritized findings]

Target ≤50 lines of output. Use tables for multi-resource comparisons.

Anti-Hallucination Rules

1. NEVER assume resource names — always discover via CLI/API in Phase 1 before referencing in Phase 2.
2. NEVER fabricate metric names or dimensions — verify against the service documentation or --help output.
3. NEVER mix CLI commands between service versions — confirm which version/API you are targeting.
4. ALWAYS use the discovery → verify → analyze chain — every resource referenced must have been discovered first.
5. ALWAYS handle empty results gracefully — an empty response is valid data, not an error to retry.

Counter-Rationalizations