PR Review Workflow Patterns

What It Does

Reference patterns and conventions for PR review workflows. Loaded by commands and agents for consistent behavior.

When to Use

Use when yellow-review plugin commands or agents need shared context for adaptive agent selection, output format, error handling, or Graphite integration.

Usage

This skill is not user-invokable. It provides shared context for the yellow-review plugin's commands and agents.

Adaptive Agent Selection

Always Selected

• code-reviewer — runs on every PR
• code-simplifier — runs as final pass after fixes applied

Conditional Selection

Selection is based on git diff --stat and git diff output analysis:

pr-test-analyzer — Selected when:

• PR contains files matching *test*, *spec*, __tests__/*
• OR PR adds/modifies files with testable logic (functions, classes, methods)

comment-analyzer — Selected when:

• Diff contains /**, """, ''', or @param/@returns/@throws annotations
• OR diff modifies .md documentation files

type-design-analyzer — Selected when:

• Files have extensions .ts, .py, .rb, .go, .rs
• AND diff contains keywords: interface, type, class, struct, enum, model, dataclass

silent-failure-hunter — Selected when:

• Diff contains: try, catch, except, rescue, recover
• OR diff contains: fallback, default, || null, ?? undefined, or None

Cross-Plugin Agents (from yellow-core)

These are spawned via Task tool when conditions match:

security-sentinel — Selected when:

• Files match: auth*, *security*, *crypto*, *.sh
• OR diff contains: exec, eval, password, token, secret, shell

architecture-strategist — Selected when:

• PR touches 10+ files across 3+ directories

performance-oracle — Selected when:

• Diff contains: query, SELECT, INSERT, loop, while, for.*range
• OR gross line count > 500

pattern-recognition-specialist — Selected when:

• PR introduces new patterns (new directories, new file type conventions)
• OR changes to agents/*.md, commands/*.md, skills/*/SKILL.md, plugin.json (plugin authoring convention checks)

code-simplicity-reviewer (yellow-core) — Available as additional pass when:

• Gross line count > 300

Line Count Calculation

Gross changes = additions + deletions from git diff --stat | tail -1.

# awk field references ($1, $2) don't need shell quoting
git diff --numstat origin/main...HEAD | awk '
  $1 != "-" { add += $1; del += $2 }
  END { print add + del }
'

Binary files show - in numstat and are excluded.

Size Tiers

• Small (< 100 lines): code-reviewer + code-simplifier only
• Medium (100-500 lines): + conditional agents based on content
• Large (> 500 lines): all applicable agents including cross-plugin

Finding Output Format

All agents use this consistent format:

**[P1|P2|P3] category — file:line**
Finding: <what the issue is>
Fix: <concrete suggestion>

Severity Definitions

• P1: Correctness bug, security vulnerability, or data loss risk. Must fix before merge.
• P2: Quality issue, maintainability concern, or convention violation. Should fix.
• P3: Style suggestion, minor improvement, or nitpick. Consider fixing.

Error Handling

GitHub API Errors

HTTP Status	Category	Action
401	Authentication	Report: "Run gh auth login to re-authenticate"
403	Permission	Report: "Insufficient permissions for this repo"
404	Not Found	Report: "Repository or PR not found"
429	Rate Limit	Exit with: "GitHub API rate limit exceeded. Wait and retry."
5xx	Server	Report: "GitHub server error. Retry in a few minutes."

Agent Failures

• Use partial results: if any agent succeeds, aggregate its findings
• Failed agents listed in summary with error reason
• Only abort if zero agents succeed

Git/Graphite Errors

Error	Action
Dirty working directory	Error: "Uncommitted changes detected. Commit or stash first."
gt submit failure	Report error, suggest gt stack to diagnose
Merge conflict on restack	Abort restack, report to user for manual resolution
gt track failure	Warn and proceed with raw git (degraded mode)

Commit Conventions

/review:pr

fix: address review findings from <agent-list>

/review:resolve

fix: resolve PR #<num> review comments

/review:all

Same per-PR messages as above, applied to each PR in sequence.

All default single-commit branches use gt modify -m "<message>". Only use gt modify --commit -m "<message>" when you intentionally want multiple commits on one branch. Push via gt submit --no-interactive.

Graphite Integration

Standard Operations

• Commit: gt modify -m "fix: ..."
• Push: gt submit --no-interactive
• Restack: gt upstack restack (abort on conflict, report to user)
• Checkout: gt checkout <branch>
• View stack: gt log

Non-Graphite PR Adoption

1. gh pr checkout <PR#> to create local branch
2. gt track to adopt into Graphite
3. If gt track fails: warn and proceed with raw git (degraded mode)

Cross-Plugin Agent References

To spawn cross-plugin agents from yellow-review commands, use the Task tool:

Task(subagent_type="yellow-core:security-sentinel",
     prompt="Review these files for security issues: <file-list>")

Agent type names follow the pattern: yellow-core:<agent-name>.

GraphQL Scripts

Located at skills/pr-review-workflow/scripts/:

• get-pr-comments <owner/repo> <pr-number> — Returns JSON array of unresolved, non-outdated review threads
• resolve-pr-thread <thread-node-id> — Resolves a single thread (idempotent)

Both require gh and jq to be installed.

Verification Loop

After resolving threads:

1. Wait 2 seconds
2. Re-fetch comments with get-pr-comments
3. If unresolved threads remain, retry up to 3 times
4. Unresolved threads after retries are reported as warnings