pull-request

Pull requests — nothing is left dangling

A PR is finished when every question raised on it has an answer and every check that gates it has actually run. Both halves get skipped in the same way: by reading a summary instead of the thing itself.

The rule: never leave a review conversation open

Every review thread on a PR must be resolved before merge — no exceptions, including threads you disagree with and threads that have become obsolete. An open thread is an unanswered question, and a merged PR with open threads tells the next reader that nobody decided.

Resolving does not mean agreeing. There are exactly three honest outcomes, and each needs a reply before the thread is resolved:

Outcome	Reply must say
Fixed	which commit, and what now enforces it (the symbol, not the intention)
Won't fix	why, specifically — cost, scope, or a rule that outranks it — not "by design"
Obsolete	why it no longer applies, e.g. the code it names was deleted

Resolving silently is the failure mode to avoid: it looks identical to fixing it, and the reviewer cannot tell which happened.

Check for threads with the API — the PR page summary and gh pr view do not list unresolved threads, so a PR can look clean while carrying several:

gh api graphql -f query='
{ repository(owner:"OWNER", name:"REPO") {
    pullRequest(number:NN) {
      reviewThreads(last:60) { nodes { id isResolved isOutdated path
        comments(last:1){nodes{author{login} body}} } }
    } } }' --jq '.data.repository.pullRequest.reviewThreads.nodes[]
                 | select(.isResolved==false) | "\(.path) | \(.comments.nodes[0].body[0:160])"'

Reply, then resolve:

gh api graphql -f query='mutation { addPullRequestReviewThreadReply(
  input:{pullRequestReviewThreadId:"THREAD_ID", body:"..."}) { clientMutationId } }'
gh api graphql -f query='mutation { resolveReviewThread(
  input:{threadId:"THREAD_ID"}) { thread { isResolved } } }'