pr-review

PR Review

Reviews open, human-authored pull requests with the care of the Forge operating model (/core:agent-loop): a read-only collector classifies the queue, one stack-aware reviewer runs per PR, each branch is built and tested locally under baseline-diff discipline, and the operator owns every merge. Repo-agnostic — stack and gates are discovered, never hardcoded.

When to Use This Skill

• A repo accumulates open contributor or collaborator PRs that need review before merge
• External PRs need a local build/test pass (the project's CI does not run the full suite)
• You triage the open PR queue and want one reviewable verdict per PR
• You verify a PR without confusing pre-existing failures with regressions it introduced

Scope: human-authored PRs only

List open PRs and exclude bots:

gh pr list --state open \
  --json number,title,author,headRefName,headRefOid,files

Drop every PR whose author.is_bot is true or whose login is app/dependabot. Bot dependency PRs belong to /github:dependabot-consolidator, not this skill. Verify the filtered list contains only human authors before dispatching reviewers.

Classify each PR: stack and gates

Classify before reviewing. Two inputs drive the classification:

1. Stack — read the PR's changed file extensions and the repo's manifests (Cargo.toml, mix.exs, build.zig, package.json, go.mod). Map to the reviewer's language skills. See references/stack-detection.md for the full table.
2. Gates — discover the repo's own gate tasks with /core:mise: run mise tasks and pick the PR-gating tasks (ci, pre-commit, test, lint, fmt:check, audit, gitleaks). Run the discovered tasks — never assume cargo/mix/npm directly.

Hand this read-only classification to the pr-collector agent.

Per-PR review: one agent per PR

Dispatch one pr-review-worker per PR. Fan-out width equals the open-PR count, the Forge slice model. Run the reviewers sequentially when the gates need exclusive hardware (integration tests, container or cluster spawns) — parallel branch checkouts in one working tree pollute each other. Before any checkout, confirm the working tree carries no other worker's branch changes and no uncommitted source changes — operator-owned tracker files or untracked local dirs are fine to leave in place (see agents/pr-review-worker.md).

Every reviewer loads, at minimum:

/core:git
/core:mise
/core:security
/core:anti-fabrication

plus the stack-specific skills from the classification (for example /rust:rust, /rust:testing, /rust:error-handling for Rust; /core:documentation for docs; /github:workflows, /github:actions for Actions changes).

Verify with baseline-diff gates

THE key insight: run each gate on main FIRST, then on the PR branch. Only a gate that was PASSING on main and is now FAILING on the branch is a regression worth blocking on.

Gate discipline:

1. Discover the gate tasks (mise tasks).
2. Run each gate on main. Capture verbatim output. Record pass/fail.
3. Check out the PR branch (git checkout <headRefName>). Run the same gates. Capture output.
4. Classify: only gates PASSING on main and FAILING on branch block.
5. Gates that fail identically on both sides are pre-existing — not regressions. A gate failing on main and passing on the branch means the PR fixed it — note that.
6. Check out main again before the next PR.

Some gates run only on the operator machine (Apple Container clusters, hardware-dependent tests) and are skipped by hosted CI. Run those locally under the same baseline-diff discipline. See references/baseline-diff-verification.md and /core:container.

Use /github:act to replay hosted CI gates locally when useful.

Review the diff

Read git diff main...<headRefName> against references/review-rubric.md: correctness, security, test coverage, no leaked secrets, and match to the PR's stated intent. The reviewer emits a structured verdict — approve or request-changes with file:line findings and verbatim gate evidence. The reviewer never edits code and never merges.

Merge and close out

Gate before merging:

1. Green on local gates (baseline-diff verified)
2. Green on remote CI (gh pr checks — all checks passing)
3. Explicit operator go-ahead, per PR

After operator approval:

gh pr merge <n> --squash

No attribution in the squash commit message. Confirm closure:

gh pr view <n> --json state

Verify state is MERGED. A request-changes PR gets a review comment instead and stays open. See references/merge-and-closeout.md.

Delegation

• Read-only PR collection and classification → agents/pr-collector.md.
• Per-PR baseline-diff gates and diff review → agents/pr-review-worker.md.

Stop-and-report gates (worker halts, does not thrash):

• A gate green on main but failing on the branch → STOP, report the gate name and output diff
• A diff that needs code changes to pass → STOP, report request-changes with the failure
• An ambiguous or contradictory PR intent → STOP, report what is unclear

Hard constraint: agents never merge unilaterally. Merge is operator-approved and executed by this skill's close-out step.

Registration

See references/registration.md for the marketplace.json, plugin.json, and sources.md edits, plus the two validators to run before committing.

Related skills

• /core:agent-loop — the Forge operating model this skill mirrors (collector hands, per-slice principals, operator-owned merge)
• /core:anti-fabrication — never claim a gate passed without showing command output
• /core:mise — discover the repo's gate tasks instead of assuming a toolchain
• /core:container — local integration gates using Apple Container
• /github:act — replay hosted CI gates locally before merge
• /github:dependabot-consolidator — the bot-PR counterpart this skill defers to

Anti-Fabrication

• Never claim a gate passed without showing the command and its verbatim output.
• Always run the baseline gate on main before blaming a PR for a failure.
• Confirm PR closure with gh pr view <n> --json state — do not assert "it merged."
• Classify stack from the changed files and manifests, not the PR title alone.
• When reporting a blocking gate, show the diff of main-vs-branch output, not a paraphrase.

See /core:anti-fabrication for the full discipline.