Review Watch

Cross-runtime: follow runtime compatibility for invocation, delegation, configuration precedence, state paths, and permissions.

You are the worker side of the review-watch tool. The skill-local scripts/review-watch.sh daemon listens for PRs where your review was requested and pings you; this skill does the actual review and decides whether to request changes or approve. Goal: loop a PR until it is clean, cheaply. Follow each step in order.

Step 1: Parse Arguments and Pick Targets

First resolve {SKILL_DIR} to the absolute, physical directory containing this loaded SKILL.md. If the host cannot expose the loaded path, use PLUGIN_ROOT, then CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT, only to locate skills/review-watch/SKILL.md. Verify requested resources exist. Never substitute an empty variable or silently fall back to /scripts.

• --doctor → run bash "{SKILL_DIR}/scripts/review-watch-tools.sh" --doctor, report its output, and exit. This checks paths, dependencies, configuration, and gh authentication without querying PRs, publishing reviews, or changing GitHub state.

• --daemon-command → run bash "{SKILL_DIR}/scripts/review-watch-tools.sh" --daemon-command, print the absolute command unchanged so the user can paste it into another terminal, and exit.

• A PR URL or number → review just that PR.

• --drain (or no argument) → process every queued PR in the daemon queue file ${XDG_STATE_HOME:-$HOME/.local/state}/git-workflow/review-watch-queue.jsonl (dedupe by repo#number@headRefOid; newest entry per PR wins). Remove entries as you finish them. New entries include the nullable PR-author login as author; accept older entries where that field is absent and fetch the author with the PR metadata below.

• --comment-only → never post REQUEST_CHANGES/APPROVE, only a COMMENT review (safe mode).

For each target resolve {owner}/{repo} and PR number (parse from the URL, or use the current repo for a bare number).

Step 2: Skip Already-Reviewed Head SHAs

Read the reviewed-SHA ledger .git-workflow/.review-watch-reviewed (legacy fallback .claude/.review-watch-reviewed). Each line is repo#number@headRefOid. Fetch the PR head SHA:

gh pr view {PR} --repo {owner}/{repo} --json number,title,url,author,isDraft,baseRefOid,headRefOid,files,additions,deletions

If repo#number@headRefOid is already in the ledger, skip this PR (nothing new since the last review). If the PR isDraft, skip and note it.

Self-review guard: GitHub forbids REQUEST_CHANGES/APPROVE on your own PR. If the PR author is you (gh api user --jq .login), operate in --comment-only mode for this PR.

Step 3: Get the Diff

gh pr diff {PR} --repo {owner}/{repo}

Note the changed file list and languages. If the diff exceeds review.maxDiffLines (default 3000), work from the file list and read files individually.

Step 4: Tier 1 — Deterministic Checks (cheap, no model reasoning)

Run the fast, mechanical checks first so obvious problems cost nothing.

Resolve configuration once from .git-workflow/config.yaml, then the legacy .claude/config.yaml fallback. If neither exists, use these defaults: reviewWatch.enabled=false, reviewWatch.linters=auto, reviewWatch.knownIssues=references/known-issues.md, and review.postEvent=auto. Stop without reviewing unless reviewWatch.enabled is exactly true; an explicit --comment-only changes posting behavior but does not bypass this opt-in gate.

a) Project linters (only if the repo is checked out locally with deps). Use the resolved reviewWatch.linters. When it is auto, auto-detect and run against the changed files; when it is an explicit command, run that exact project-owned command:

• JS/TS: npx eslint <changed> , npx tsc --noEmit
• CSS/SCSS: npx stylelint <changed css>
• Python: ruff check <changed> / flake8
• Others: the project's configured lint command (.git-workflow/config.yaml → testing.lint).

If the repo is not available locally (a PR on someone else's repo you have not cloned), skip the linters and note it — Tier 2 still covers logic from the diff.

b) Known-issues ruleset. Resolve reviewWatch.knownIssues as follows: an absolute path is used as-is; for a relative path, prefer a matching project-root file, otherwise resolve it under {SKILL_DIR}. If the setting is absent, use the bundled {SKILL_DIR}/references/known-issues.md. Read its grep-style patterns and scan only changed diff lines. These are the "errors we already know": stray console.log, debugger, CSS !important abuse, inline styles, shipped TODO/FIXME, hard-coded colors, TS any, etc. If the configured file is missing, stop with the resolved path instead of silently dropping the deterministic checks.

Collect all Tier-1 findings with file, line, and the rule that fired. Anything at severity error/BLOCKING/HIGH is a blocker.

If Tier 1 found blockers → go straight to Step 6 and post REQUEST_CHANGES with those findings. Skip Tier 2 (do not spend the expensive review when there are already known errors to fix). This is the cost gate.

Step 5: Tier 2 — Full Review Fan-out (only when Tier 1 is clean)

Run the standard review: delegate, through the active host's subagent mechanism, to the specialized reviewers used by the review skill (pr-reviewer always; silent-failure-hunter, type-design-analyzer, pr-test-analyzer, comment-analyzer by changed-file type), in parallel. Hand each the PR number/repo, baseRefOid as BASE_SHA, headRefOid as HEAD_SHA, the changed-file list, and the diff.

Aggregate and de-duplicate their findings. Keep only findings with confidence ≥ 80 and drop the false-positive classes (pre-existing, linter-catchable, intentionally-silenced, formatter-style, speculative) — the same bar as the review skill. Assign each survivor a severity (BLOCKING / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW).

Step 6: Decide and Post

Combine Tier-1 blockers and Tier-2 findings. Resolve review.postEvent from the same config (auto by default). Set {HAS_BLOCKING} to true when any BLOCKING/HIGH finding survived and set {SELF_AUTHORED_FLAG} to --self-authored only for the self-review case. Determine the event with the package's tested resolver:

REVIEW_EVENT="$(bash "{SKILL_DIR}/../review/scripts/review-event.sh" \
  --has-blocking {HAS_BLOCKING} {SELF_AUTHORED_FLAG})"

If --comment-only was passed, force REVIEW_EVENT=COMMENT after resolution. Never infer a more permissive event when the resolver reports invalid configuration.

• REVIEW_EVENT=REQUEST_CHANGES. Build the review body: a one-line verdict, then each finding as severity — file permalink — what is wrong — suggested fix, using SHA permalinks (https://github.com/{owner}/{repo}/blob/{headRefOid}/{path}#L{line}, literal). Post:

  gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{PR}/reviews" --method POST \
    -f body="$(cat <<'REVIEW_EOF'
  {REVIEW_BODY}
  REVIEW_EOF
  )" -f event="$REVIEW_EVENT"
  

• No BLOCKING/HIGH (clean) → APPROVE or COMMENT as resolved. Post the same way with -f event="$REVIEW_EVENT", a short "looks good" body plus any remaining LOW/MEDIUM notes. A clean result triggers the human-readable change brief (Step 7) and ping even when safe mode or self-authorship forces the GitHub event to COMMENT.

Respect review.postToGitHub (ask | always | never, default ask): when ask, show the drafted review and confirm through the host's user-input mechanism before posting. Truncate bodies over ~65,000 characters.

Step 7: On Clean — Generate the Change Brief and Ping

When the PR is clean (HAS_BLOCKING=false, whether the posted event is APPROVE or COMMENT):

• Generate the human-facing HTML decision brief by following /change-brief {PR} in Claude Code or $change-brief {PR} in Codex. Output goes to .git-workflow/change-brief/pr-{PR}/index.html.

• Ping the human that it is ready:

  bash "{SKILL_DIR}/scripts/notify.sh" \
    "{owner}/{repo} · PR #{PR}" \
    "{AUTHOR_LABEL} — Ready for merge: {title}"
  

  Resolve {AUTHOR_LABEL} as @{author.login}, or unknown author when GitHub returns no author. This matches the daemon's initial review-request notification, which uses the same title and {AUTHOR_LABEL} — {title} as its message.

Step 8: Record and Loop

Append repo#number@headRefOid to .git-workflow/.review-watch-reviewed so this exact head SHA is not reviewed again. Remove the PR from the daemon queue file if you were draining it.

The loop is head-SHA driven: when the author pushes a fix, the daemon detects the new head SHA and re-queues the PR; running this skill again reviews only the new SHA. Repeat REQUEST_CHANGES → author fixes → re-review until a round posts APPROVE. Never re-review an unchanged SHA (the ledger prevents it).

Step 9: Report

Print a compact summary per PR: verdict (REQUEST_CHANGES / APPROVED / COMMENTED), Tier-1 vs Tier-2 finding counts, whether a change brief was written, and the PR URL.

Configuration Reference

The daemon implementation and generic notifier are owned by the sibling notifications skill; the skill-local scripts here are compatibility wrappers. Enabling notifications.prActivity adds authored-PR review events to the same GraphQL poll without duplicating the daemon.

Error Handling