Code Review
Pull request review for small teams: what to block, what to skip, and how AI-written diffs change the pass.
- Nov- 2025 -29 November
What a Small Team Should Require Before Merge
A merge button is a promise. On a team of four or five engineers, it is the promise that whatever sits on the main branch will not cost someone else their Saturday.
Read More » - Oct- 2025 -28 October
Async Review vs Pairing on the Same Change
Two engineers open the same pull request. One leaves a comment at 9:40 p.m. from a kitchen table, three sentences and a suggestion.
Read More » - Oct- 2025 -8 October
Review Metrics That Do Not Punish Careful Reviewers
Every review system eventually produces the same quiet complaint, and it comes from the people whose work is hardest to measure: the reviewer who spends forty minutes on a submission that another revi
Read More » - Aug- 2025 -27 August
How to Write a Review Comment That Unsticks the Author
Open any code review thread on GitHub and count the comments that get a reply. Most of them do not, and the reason is rarely that the author disagrees.
Read More » - Aug- 2025 -22 August
Nitpicks That Waste Review Time
A code review that runs forty minutes over its slot usually has a body in the room. The pull request is 60 lines. Two of those lines change behavior.
Read More » - Aug- 2025 -20 August
A First-Week Guide to Reviewing on an Unfamiliar Repo
Week one on a codebase nobody on the team has touched in years has a particular texture. The tests pass locally but fail in CI. The README describes an architecture that no longer exists.
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