Chapter 12: Review

If green can't settle it, someone has to look.

Code review

Someone other than the author reads a change before it joins the main branch and decides whether it should. It is a judgement about the change, made by a person or an agent, on top of whatever the automatic checks said.

Review used to teach a second person the code as a side effect. With an agent as author, that side effect matters more: the author forgets everything when the session ends, so the reviewer may be the only one who ever understands the change.

Say it to your agent

“Before you open the pull request, run git diff main...HEAD, read the whole diff as if someone else wrote it, and tell me what you would ask them to change.”

The workshop

Name a word, or describe what you mean in everyday language.