piv-review-pr

Review PR: The Agentic Gate Before the Human

Input: $ARGUMENTS

The point of this skill is fresh eyes: it reviews the PR in a clean context — not the context that wrote the code — and can hand the deep analysis to the code-reviewer agent, which is the whole reason the review catches what the author's own context rationalizes away. It posts its verdict on the PR, then a human makes the final call.

Phase 1 — Fetch the PR

Resolve the input to a PR number (a number, a URL, or a branch via gh pr list --head <branch> --json number -q '.[0].number'). Then:

gh pr view {N} --json number,title,body,author,headRefName,baseRefName,state,additions,deletions,changedFiles,files
gh pr diff {N}
gh pr checkout {N}

State guard: MERGED/CLOSED → stop ("nothing to review"); DRAFT → review direction, don't approve/block.

Phase 2 — Load the context (so you review against the right bar)

• CLAUDE.md + any .claude/references/ — the project's standards are the review rubric.
• The implementation report (if piv-implement wrote one — .claude/reports/*{branch}*) + its plan: read the documented deviations. A documented deviation is an intentional decision, not an issue — only flag undocumented divergences. (No report? Review normally and note its absence.)
• The PR's own intent (title/body): what problem it claims to solve.

Phase 3 — Run validation

Run the project's real suite (the piv-validate skill, or the plan's validation commands) — tests, type-check, lint, build. Capture pass/fail + counts. A red suite is a finding in itself.

Phase 4 — Review the diff (dispatch the code-reviewer agent)

Hand the deep pass to a code-reviewer subagent if the project has one (.claude/agents/code-reviewer.md); otherwise review in this session, in a clean context — it reviews against the project's standards and reports high-confidence issues only. Read every changed file in full (not just the diff) for context. Cover: correctness · type safety · pattern/standards compliance · security · performance · tests present · maintainability.

Categorize every issue by severity:

Severity	Meaning
Critical	Blocking — security, data loss, crashes
High	Should fix before merge — type-safety holes, missing error handling, logic errors
Medium	Pattern inconsistencies, missing edge cases, undocumented deviations
Low	Suggestions, minor polish

Acknowledge what's done well, too — review is constructive, not just a defect list.

Phase 5 — Decide

• Approve — no critical/high issues, validation passes, matches intent.
• Request changes — high issues, or fixable validation failures, or undocumented pattern violations.
• Block (request-changes, strongly) — critical security/data issues, or wrong fundamental approach.
• Honor an explicit --approve / --request-changes flag, but never approve over an unresolved critical issue.

Phase 6 — Post to GitHub + save the report

Write the report to .claude/code-reviews/pr-{N}-review.md (summary · issues by severity with file:line + fix · validation table · what's good · recommendation). Then post it:

# approve
gh pr review {N} --approve --body-file .claude/code-reviews/pr-{N}-review.md
# request changes
gh pr review {N} --request-changes --body-file .claude/code-reviews/pr-{N}-review.md
# or just comment (draft PRs / advisory)
gh pr comment {N} --body-file .claude/code-reviews/pr-{N}-review.md

Output + hand off

Print: PR number/URL · issue counts by severity · validation results · the recommendation. Then hand off: "Posted on the PR. A human now reviews the code + this review and merges." If there are issues, the natural next step is piv-fix-review-findings on the report, then re-run validation.

Notes

• Fresh eyes is the whole point — run this in a clean context (or let the code-reviewer agent be the clean context). Don't review with the session that wrote the code; it rationalizes instead of scrutinizing.
• This is the agentic gate; it does not replace the human — it gives the human a validated, triaged PR to approve. Going deeper means multiple review agents, tuning the reviewer to your stack, and a validation pyramid behind it.