Lintro Review

Lintro AI Review (standard local pass)

Run lintro's own AI diff review (lintro review) on the branch. Since 2026-08-02 (owner instruction) this is a standard third local pre-push pass alongside coderabbit and greptile, not just a fallback — and when those two are rate-limited or down, the lintro pass is the AI review of record for the push.

When to use

• As part of the default pre-push review set (coderabbit + greptile + this).
• CodeRabbit and/or Greptile are rate-limited, erroring, or otherwise unavailable.
• You want an AI pass on the branch diff (or working tree) right now.

At final merge, bot threads that did get posted on the PR must still be triaged; a local lintro pass doesn't resolve GitHub threads.

Two correctness rules (do not skip)

1. Use released lintro via uvx, never uv run lintro. The reviewer engine must be stable and independent of the working tree — especially when the branch is itself modifying lintro's AI/provider layer (you must not review half-migrated code with itself). Floor is >=0.94.7: that release carries both the CLI auth-mode detection (#1859, subscription OAuth works) and the CLI stdout error surfacing (#1836).
2. Enable AI locally behind a skip-worktree guard. Many repos (incl. py-lintro) ship .lintro-config.yaml with no ai: block or ai.enabled: false. Flip it on locally in a way that cannot be staged or committed.

Steps

1. Enable AI locally without commit risk — only if the project config has AI disabled (grep -A2 '^ai:' .lintro-config.yaml; skip this step if already enabled: true / review: true):

   git update-index --skip-worktree .lintro-config.yaml
   

   Then merge this ai: mapping into .lintro-config.yaml (append/merge the block — the rest of the project config stays as-is, so --with-lint keeps working):

   ai:
     enabled: true
     review: true
     provider: cursor
     model: cursor-grok-4.5-high
   

2. Preflight the engine — Cursor + Grok 4.5 is the standard reviewer (owner instruction, 2026-08-11):

   • Provider is cursor, model is cursor-grok-4.5-high (Cursor's Grok 4.5 id — confirm with cursor-agent models if it errors), via --transport cli. Verify the CLI exists with cursor-agent --version.
   • Workspace trust is required once per directory, or lintro's invocation dies with "Workspace Trust Required". Grant it non-interactively from the repo/worktree root: cursor-agent -p 'Reply with exactly: ok' --trust --model cursor-grok-4.5-high --output-format text — trust persists for subsequent runs.
   • Fallbacks, in order, only when cursor-agent is missing or erroring (say so in the report): logged-in claude CLI with --transport cli and no ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in the environment (OAuth session, subscription billing; lintro ≥0.94.7 handles --bare detection); then ANTHROPIC_API_KEY with either transport; then OPENAI_API_KEY with ai.provider: openai and --transport api. Each fallback also updates the step-1 yaml's ai.provider to the matching engine (e.g. anthropic for Claude, openai for OpenAI) and fixes or removes ai.model so the provider never sees cursor-grok-4.5-high (removing it uses the provider default) — then reruns uvx; the review command reads the config, not the fallback list.
   • No engine available → run the step-5 teardown first (it is mandatory whenever step 1 ran), then STOP and report which credential/binary is missing.

3. Run the review against the fresh base (a stale local main reviews the wrong diff), including lint:

   base="$(git symbolic-ref --quiet --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed 's@^origin/@@' || echo main)"
   git fetch --quiet origin "$base"
   uvx --from 'lintro[ai]>=0.94.7' lintro review --base "origin/$base" --with-lint --transport cli --timeout 600
   

   • Swap --transport cli for api per the step-2 outcome. CLI-transport turns run the whole review in one claude invocation — pass --timeout 600 (the 60s default is API-stream-sized and will kill a CLI turn; #1900).
   • Omitting --depth/--strictness uses the project's configured review defaults. For a heavier final pass, add --strictness thorough --depth 3 (more spend).

4. Triage — fix real findings; note any you dismiss and why, as you would in a CR/Greptile thread.

5. Tear down the local toggle so it can never land (un-skip first, then restore):

   git update-index --no-skip-worktree .lintro-config.yaml
   git checkout .lintro-config.yaml
   

Relationship to coderabbit / greptile

Default pre-push flow runs all three where available:

commit → [greptile ‖ coderabbit ‖ lintro-review] → pr

When CR/Greptile are rate-limited, do not wait for their reset — the lintro pass (plus whichever of the other two ran) is the pre-push review of record. Still triage any bot threads that get posted on the PR afterward.

Notes

• Do not run the project's test suite while the step-1 ai.enabled: true toggle is active. It leaks into config/doctor tests and fails them (a false red that looks like a code defect). Tear the toggle down (step 5) before running any tests, or don't run tests during a review.
• Review exit code 2 means "no review was produced" (missing credential, provider unreachable, quota); the JSON error envelope names the kind. Since 0.94.1 the CLI's stdout error detail is surfaced — read it before diagnosing.
• If --transport cli fails on a flag the installed claude doesn't accept, that's live signal for the AI CLI-transport contract tests (py-lintro #1614) — report it.