Gh Submit Review

Submit a PR Review

Consult the gh pr manual for more details.

Close the loop after reviewing someone else's pull request: turn your findings into a formal GitHub review with the right event, a summary body, and inline comments anchored to the lines they concern.

For the other side - resolving comments left on your own PR - use /gh-resolve-pr-comments.

1. Identify the PR and repo

gh pr view <pr> --json number,url,headRefName,baseRefName,author
gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q '.nameWithOwner'

Pass an explicit PR number or URL when reviewing a branch you have not checked out. Parse nameWithOwner into {owner} and {repo} for the API calls below.

2. Choose the event

Every review carries exactly one event. Pick it by the strongest finding, not the average:

Etiquette: one blocking finding is enough to request changes - do not soften it to a comment. Conversely, do not request changes over pure style preferences; leave those as comment-level nits and approve.

3. Draft the body and inline comments

• Summary body: lead with the verdict and its reason. For request-changes, list the blocking items up front so the author sees them without scrolling.
• Inline comments: anchor each specific finding to its file and line rather than describing locations in prose. Use RIGHT for the new version of the diff, LEFT for the old. The line must appear in the PR diff or the API rejects the comment.

4. Submit

Summary only (no inline comments) - use gh pr review directly:

gh pr review <pr> --request-changes --body "Two blocking issues inline; see comments."

Swap in --approve or --comment as chosen. Use --body-file for a long body.

With inline comments - build a single JSON payload and post it to the reviews endpoint so the event, body, and all inline comments land as one review:

{
  "event": "REQUEST_CHANGES",
  "body": "Summary of the review verdict and reasoning.",
  "comments": [
    {
      "path": "src/auth.ts",
      "line": 42,
      "side": "RIGHT",
      "body": "This dereferences `user` before the null check on line 39."
    },
    {
      "path": "src/auth.ts",
      "start_line": 60,
      "line": 64,
      "side": "RIGHT",
      "body": "This whole block duplicates `validateSession`."
    }
  ]
}

gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/<pr>/reviews --input review.json

event must be APPROVE, REQUEST_CHANGES, or COMMENT. Omit event to leave the review PENDING (a draft only you can see) when you want to eyeball it on GitHub before publishing. Use start_line with line for a multi-line comment.

5. Confirm

Report the submitted event, the summary, and the count of inline comments, plus the PR URL. Done when the review appears on the PR with its event and every intended inline comment attached.