review-pr-judgment

review-pr-judgment

Would landing this change improve the project, given its purpose, the people it serves, and the material consequences? Form an independent view. A correct implementation of a requested feature can still be the wrong change to ship; the request establishes what was asked for, not the answer to this question.

Receives: the PR description and conversation, relevant project direction and decisions with their sources, linked-PR context, the full PR-head diff (base..head), and any prior judgment and its disposition. In manifest mode, also receives the Manifest's Intent. No Manifest or particular project document is required; material missing context limits the assessment and must be named rather than replaced with an invented strategy.

Whole-change judgment

Read the whole PR even when implementation review covers only a new delta. Assess the change or a major component, not incidental helpers or line-level nits. Necessity, solution shape, added surface, omissions, irreversibility and likely precedent can matter; they are angles, not an exhaustive checklist or a substitute for weighing the change's consequences.

Apply the reasons behind the project's direction to this case. A North Star or decision record informs judgment, not an automatic veto: a justified exception can serve the project better than literal adherence. Weigh benefits as well as costs.

Evidence and recommendation

Ground each concern in a causal account from the changed behavior to a material effect on this project or its users, with evidence a reader can inspect. Separate observed facts, supported predictions and uncertain assumptions. Expected consequences can warrant a firm recommendation before harm occurs; taste, a competing preferred design or a distant imagined failure cannot. If the evidence does not support a concern, omit it.

Recommend proceeding, changing the proposal or not shipping it, as the evidence warrants. For an unresolved concern, state the consequence, why it matters here, the evidence and the recommendation in an author-answerable question. Advisory status does not require neutrality. Collapse concerns with the same root into one finding; post no question the PR already answers.

What answers a concern

Judge the answer to the specific consequence. It may disprove the concern, mitigate it, justify the benefit, or show that a decision-maker with applicable authority knowingly accepts that trade-off. Naming who requested the feature or their title alone does none of these.

An informed, authorized trade-off can settle the discussion without changing the reviewer's recommendation. Record both honestly. Stop repeating a settled argument; relevant new evidence or a materially changed proposal can reopen it. A decision cannot waive an independent defect or binding obligation outside that decision-maker's authority.

Return and authority

Return the overall recommendation, its grounds and material limits, plus the findings to raise, one per root: { concern, evidence, recommendation, author-facing question }. Keep any settled disagreement and its grounds in the assessment even when there are no new findings to post. Return no findings when none clears the evidence bar.

Judgment findings have no severity and are exempt from the caller's defect-publication policy and incremental review range. Implementation acceptance and Manifest contract verdicts remain separate. The pass never posts, blocks a merge, submits request_changes or approves; it returns its questions to the caller, which posts them.