Review a pull request: fetch comments, validate, apply fixes, resolve conflicts, and close out all threads.
Argument: $ARGUMENTS — PR number (required), plus an optional --conductor flag. Example: /review-pr 42
Conductor mode
/pr-conductor phase 4 passes --conductor. The flag trims work the surrounding pipeline already does; a run without it behaves exactly as before. The deltas, each restated at the step it changes:
- Step 3 — trust comments this pipeline posted itself; validate only human or foreign ones.
- Step 5 — record a baseline commit, then run only the tests covering the files the fixes touched.
- Step 6 — security-review the fix delta, not the whole PR diff.
- Step 11 — do not execute test-plan items; the conductor's
local-attestphase runs them and ticks the boxes. Write a<!-- test-plan: deferred -->marker into the PR body so the merge gate blocks until they actually run. - Step 14 — a deferred plan yields status
deferred, notreviewed.
Workflow
Before any step, bind the PR number and the mode. --conductor may appear in any position — strip it first, then take the PR number from what remains, so /review-pr --conductor 42 and /review-pr 42 --conductor behave identically. commands/pre-pr.md uses the same strip-anywhere rule.
CONDUCTOR=0
REST="$ARGUMENTS"
case " $REST " in *" --conductor "*) CONDUCTOR=1 ;; esac
REST="$(printf '%s' "$REST" | sed 's/--conductor//g' | xargs)"
NUMBER="${REST%% *}"
1. Fetch PR details and check branch health
gh pr view "$NUMBER" --json number,title,headRefName,baseRefName,body,mergeable,mergeStateStatus,additions,deletions
Immediately inspect mergeable and mergeStateStatus:
mergeable |
mergeStateStatus |
Action |
|---|---|---|
MERGEABLE |
CLEAN |
Proceed normally |
MERGEABLE |
UNSTABLE |
Proceed — CI failing but no conflict; fix CI in step 10 |
MERGEABLE |
BEHIND |
Rebase onto base branch before collecting comments |
CONFLICTING |
DIRTY |
Rebase first (step 9) before any other work |
UNKNOWN |
any | Re-fetch after 30 s — GitHub is still computing, do not proceed blind |
If the branch is conflicting or behind, resolve it before collecting comments or applying fixes. A stale or conflicting branch produces a misleading diff and stale Copilot comments.
2. Collect ALL review comments
gh pr view "$NUMBER" --json reviews,comments
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/$NUMBER/comments"
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/$NUMBER/reviews"
({owner} and {repo} are substituted automatically by gh api from the current git remote.)
List every comment with: author, body, file path + line (if applicable), and state (pending/resolved).
3. Validate each comment
Conductor mode: a comment that /post-pr-review produced has passed a mechanical filter — its line is in the diff and its self-rated confidence cleared 80 (skills/post-pr-review/SKILL.md step 6). That filter never read the code and never judged whether the finding is correct, so it is not a substitute for this step. What it does justify is skipping the re-read for findings whose correctness is checkable from the diff alone.
Fast-path a comment only when all three hold:
- It carries a
post-pr-review:v1:marker, and - its author matches the authenticated login (
gh api user -q .login) — the marker is public text anyone can paste, so the marker alone proves nothing, and - its
categoryis mechanical:style,comment, ortype.
Everything else — bug, design, security, test, simplify, error-handling, any unmarked comment, any foreign author — gets the full validation below. Those are the categories where a confident agent is most often wrong, and under --conductor this is the only stage that can still reject a finding: step 4 replies to false positives, and after this the fixes are applied, pushed with [skip ci], and the threads resolved. Never let a critical finding through on the fast path regardless of category.
For each review comment:
- Read the relevant file and surrounding code context
- Determine: is this a valid issue (real bug, style violation, missing edge case, legit improvement) or a false positive (nitpick that's wrong, misunderstanding of intent, outdated concern)?
- Classify as:
✅ valid — will fixor⚠️ false positive — will explain
4. Reply to false positives immediately
For each false positive, reply now with a concise explanation:
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/$NUMBER/comments/<comment_id>/replies" \
-f body="<concise explanation of why this is not an issue>"
Hold replies to valid issues until after the push in step 7 — do not acknowledge fixes you haven't yet delivered.
5. Apply fixes (in an isolated worktree, never on the caller's branch)
git fetch origin "pull/$NUMBER/head:pr-$NUMBER"
mkdir -p .claude/worktrees
if [ ! -d ".claude/worktrees/pr-$NUMBER" ]; then
git worktree add ".claude/worktrees/pr-$NUMBER" "pr-$NUMBER"
fi
Work exclusively inside .claude/worktrees/pr-$NUMBER/. Do not use gh pr checkout or git checkout — those switch the caller's working tree — and do not use git stash, because stashes are repo-global and can interfere with the caller's stash list.
Conductor mode: record the baseline commit before applying anything — step 6 diffs against it. Bind it against the worktree explicitly, not the caller's checkout: the block above necessarily ran in the caller's tree, and when this skill is invoked from a checkout that is not the PR branch, a bare git rev-parse HEAD captures the wrong commit and step 6 silently reviews a two-branch divergence instead of your fixes.
BASELINE=$(git -C ".claude/worktrees/pr-$NUMBER" rev-parse HEAD)
- Apply all fixes for valid comments, TDD-first (failing test → fix → green).
- Detect and run the project test suite:
Makefilewithtesttarget →make testpackage.json→npm test(orpnpm/yarnper lockfile)go.mod→go test ./...pyproject.toml→pytest(oruv run pytest)
- Commit with a clear message referencing the review (e.g.,
fix: address PR review — <summary>).
Conductor mode: once the fixes exist, narrow that test run to the files they touched, using the runner's own scoping (npx vitest related <files>, go test on the touched packages, pytest on the matching test files). A runner with no scoping mechanism — a bare make test target — falls back to the full suite. The full suite runs regardless in the conductor's local-attest phase, so a second full run here buys nothing.
Leave the worktree in place when done. Print the cleanup command:
git worktree remove .claude/worktrees/pr-$NUMBER
6. Security review
Conductor mode: phase 3's security-auditor agent already reviewed the full PR diff. Review only what this step's fixes added, staging the delta the way commands/pre-pr.md step 3 does:
git diff "$BASELINE"..HEAD | git apply --cached --allow-empty
Then run /security-review staged and unstage with git restore --staged .. If no fix commits were made, record security: no delta and skip to step 7.
Standalone runs review the whole PR diff. Before pushing, run the /security-review skill on it:
/security-review $NUMBER
If it flags real issues:
- Fix them in the same branch
- Add to the commit message (e.g.,
fix: address PR review + security findings) - Note them in the summary under a Security column
If all findings are false positives, note "security: clean" in the summary.
7. Push
Push to the PR branch. If the push fails (branch protection, network, non-fast-forward), stop: do not post replies or resolve threads — the remote does not yet have the commits the replies reference.
8. Reply to valid comments (after push)
Only after the push succeeds, reply to each valid comment confirming the fix:
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/$NUMBER/comments/<comment_id>/replies" \
-f body="Fixed in <commit-sha> — <one-line description of the fix>."
9. Check for merge conflicts and staleness
gh pr view "$NUMBER" --json mergeable,mergeStateStatus,baseRefName
If mergeable is CONFLICTING or mergeStateStatus is BEHIND:
- Fetch the latest base ref:
git fetch origin <baseRefName> - Rebase onto the updated base:
git rebase origin/<baseRefName> - Resolve conflicts (prefer the PR branch's intent, integrate base branch updates)
- Force-push with
--force-with-leaseonly with explicit user confirmation - Verify the build still passes after rebase
- Do not proceed to step 10 until the branch is clean and up-to-date
10. Check failed CI pipelines
gh pr checks "$NUMBER" --json name,state,bucket,link
For any check with bucket: "fail":
- Fetch the logs:
gh run list --branch <headRefName> --limit 3 --json databaseId,status,conclusion,name gh run view <runId> --log-failed - Identify the root cause (test failure, lint error, build error, flaky, missing env var).
- If the fix is straightforward: apply it on the PR branch, include in the review commit, note "CI fix: <description>" in the summary.
- If the failure is infrastructure/flaky: re-trigger with
gh run rerun <runId> --failed, note "CI: re-triggered flaky <jobName>" in the summary. - If the failure requires design decisions or is out of scope: leave a PR comment explaining it, note "CI: blocked — <reason>" in the summary.
11. Verify the test plan
If the PR body has no ## Test plan section: leave a comment asking the author to add one, record test-plan: missing in the final summary, and skip steps 12 and 13. Jump directly to the summary with status test-plan-missing.
Conductor mode: still check that the ## Test plan section exists (a missing one is handled exactly as above) and still classify each item as runnable or manual for the summary. Do not execute any item here, and do not tick any checkbox. The conductor's local-attest phase runs the full CI matrix immediately after this skill returns, and ticks each covered box against the attested SHA using the printf and PATCH shape below.
Record the deferral in the PR body before moving on, so it is a fact a gate can read rather than a promise:
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/$NUMBER" --method PATCH \
-f body="$(gh pr view "$NUMBER" --json body -q .body)
<!-- test-plan: deferred -->"
dotbabel pr-stack gate --gate merge fails with DEFERRED_TEST_PLAN while that marker is present, so a PR cannot merge on an unrun plan even if this skill is invoked directly, the conductor stops early, or phase 5 aborts. Only the phase that actually runs the items removes it. Then go to step 12.
The CI-skip exception below is dead under the conductor anyway: every intermediate commit carries [skip ci], so no passing CI check label exists to match against.
If a ## Test plan section exists, check whether the CI-skip exception applies:
gh pr checks "$NUMBER" --json name,state,bucket
CI-skip rule (narrow): skip the local run only if every test-plan item is a runnable command whose exact text matches a named, passing CI check label. If any item is manual, prose-only, or has no CI counterpart, run all items locally.
Otherwise: run every item locally from inside .claude/worktrees/pr-$NUMBER/. Classify each result as:
✓ local— ran and passed✗ failed— ran and failed (fix before proceeding; do not tick the box)skipped— requires infra or secrets not available locally (note reason)
After running, tick the checkboxes in the PR description for each passing item. Use printf (not echo) to avoid escape-sequence corruption, and substitute the real checklist line text — the sed pattern below is pseudocode illustrating the shape of the transform:
# Pseudocode — substitute real checklist line text for <item text>
BODY=$(gh pr view "$NUMBER" --json body -q .body)
UPDATED=$(printf '%s' "$BODY" | sed 's/- \[ \] <item text>/- [x] <item text>/g')
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/$NUMBER" --method PATCH -f body="$UPDATED"
Replace - [ ] with - [x] only for lines whose local run passed; leave - [ ] for skipped or failed items.
Then post the evidence as a PR comment:
gh pr comment "$NUMBER" --body "Test plan verified against HEAD $(git rev-parse HEAD):
- \`<item>\` — ✓ local
- \`<item>\` — skipped (requires live DB)
..."
12. Resolve all review threads
After fixes are pushed, resolve every addressed review thread:
# Fetch thread IDs — pass variables with -F so GraphQL can bind them
gh api graphql \
-F owner="$(gh repo view --json owner -q .owner.login)" \
-F repo="$(gh repo view --json name -q .name)" \
-F number="$NUMBER" \
-f query='query($owner: String!, $repo: String!, $number: Int!) {
repository(owner: $owner, name: $repo) {
pullRequest(number: $number) {
reviewThreads(first: 50) {
nodes { id isResolved comments(first: 1) { nodes { body path } } }
}
}
}
}'
# Resolve each addressed unresolved thread
gh api graphql -f query='mutation { resolveReviewThread(input: {threadId: "<thread_id>"}) { thread { isResolved } } }'
Do NOT use minimizeComment — that hides comments instead of resolving them. Always use resolveReviewThread with a thread ID starting with PRRT_.
13. Final branch health gate
Before writing the summary, re-verify:
gh pr view "$NUMBER" --json mergeable,mergeStateStatus
mergeable: CONFLICTING→ do not markreviewed; fix conflicts and re-run CImergeStateStatus: BEHIND→ rebase onto base and push before closing out- Only proceed when
mergeableisMERGEABLEand status isCLEANorUNSTABLE(with all CI failures already addressed)
14. Summary report
Output a table:
| PR | Title | Comments | Valid | False Pos | Fixed | Security | CI | Test Plan | Conflicts | Status |
|---|
A PR may only be marked reviewed if:
- The §7 push succeeded
- A test plan is present and all auto-runnable commands passed. In conductor mode a deferred plan does not satisfy this — the row status is
deferred, notreviewed, the Test Plan column readsdeferred → local-attest, and the<!-- test-plan: deferred -->marker from step 11 keeps the merge gate red until the phase that runs the items clears it. Only the conductor's phase 6 may report the run as complete, and only after phase 5 has disposed of the plan - No unresolved CI failures remain
mergeableisMERGEABLEand branch is notBEHIND(verified in step 13)
Otherwise the row status is blocked, push-failed, test-plan-missing, or conflicts-unresolved and the blocker is called out.
End with the commit pushed, the worktree cleanup command, and any remaining action items.