code-review

Code Review

Purpose

Evaluate a code change for correctness, safety, compatibility, and maintainability.

Prioritize defects with real impact over subjective style preferences.

Do not modify the code unless the user explicitly requests corrections.

Review workflow

1. Establish the review scope

Determine what must be reviewed:

• current working tree changes;
• staged changes;
• a commit;
• a branch comparison;
• a pull request;
• specific files;
• a supplied patch or diff.

Identify the intended behavior of the change before judging its implementation.

Do not expand the review into unrelated parts of the repository without a concrete reason.

2. Inspect repository guidance

Before reviewing:

• read applicable AGENTS.md files;
• inspect relevant project documentation;
• identify language, framework, runtime, and package manager;
• inspect testing, linting, formatting, and build conventions;
• understand established architectural patterns.

Review the change against the repository's actual conventions, not generic preferences.

3. Understand the change

Determine:

• what behavior is being added or changed;
• which modules and contracts are affected;
• what assumptions the implementation makes;
• what data enters and leaves the changed code;
• whether persistence, authentication, authorization, concurrency, or external integrations are involved.

Read enough surrounding code to understand the changed behavior, but avoid scanning the entire repository.

4. Review functional correctness

Check for:

• incorrect conditions;
• incomplete branches;
• wrong return values;
• broken state transitions;
• incorrect asynchronous behavior;
• unhandled errors;
• improper null or undefined handling;
• invalid assumptions about data;
• incorrect ordering;
• off-by-one errors;
• unintended side effects;
• behavior that contradicts the requested change.

Focus first on defects that could produce incorrect results.

5. Review contracts and compatibility