Review Branch

When to use this skill

Use this skill when a user wants to review a git branch, analyze the differences between branches (e.g., comparing a feature branch to main), or perform a pre-merge inspection. This is useful for identifying potential bugs, ensuring consistent coding style, and verifying commit message standards.

Instructions

1. Identify the Scope of Review

• Determine if the review is for a local branch or a Pull Request (PR).
• For PRs, you can fetch the PR head to a local branch using: git fetch origin pull/<pr-number>/head:pr-<pr-number> Then, check out the new branch: git checkout pr-<pr-number>
• Determine the source branch (the branch being reviewed) and the target branch (the branch it will be merged into, e.g., main or develop).
• If not specified, default to comparing the current branch against HEAD's tracking branch or a common base like main.

2. Gather Context

• Run git status to check for any uncommitted changes that might affect the review.
• Run git log <target-branch>..<source-branch> to review the commit history, messages, and authorship.
• Run git diff <target-branch>...<source-branch> (triple-dot diff) to see the changes introduced in the source branch since it diverged from the target.

3. Analyze Commits

• Commit Messages: Check if they follow the project's format (e.g., Conventional Commits).
• Commit Granularity: Ensure commits are logical and atomic.

4. Analyze Code Changes

• Conventions: Verify adherence to project naming, formatting, and architectural patterns.
• Safety & Security: Look for hardcoded secrets, unsafe operations, or lack of error handling.
• Test Coverage: Check if new features or bug fixes include corresponding tests.
• Complexity: Identify overly complex functions or large files that may need refactoring.

5. Provide Feedback

• Generate a structured review report highlighting:
  • Summary: High-level overview of the changes.
  • Strengths: What was done well.
  • Issues/Suggestions: Clear, actionable items for improvement, categorized by severity (e.g., Critical, Minor, Suggestion).
  • Verification Status: Mention if tests pass or if new tests are missing.

6. Finalize

• Ask the user if they would like you to automatically fix any of the identified minor issues (e.g., formatting) or if they need more details on specific changes.