0c880bfbb3
- Drop the concrete incident reference; the doc should stand on its own without pointing at one PR. - Reframe the three-part gate as per-repo branch-protection settings, not universal fact — CI-required, stale-review-dismissal, and auto-merge are each configurable, not hive law. - Reframe what auto-merge signals: the arming human already judged the PR sound at a coarse level and expects only minor tweaks past that point, not zero human review ever. A reviewer's bar is substantive doubt, not any nit.
65 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
65 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
# The PR review gate
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What a review verdict means, why a reviewer shouldn't wait on CI to
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submit one, and what "armed to auto-merge" actually signals about the
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human review that already happened.
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## The gate has (up to) three parts, and they're per-repo settings
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Whether a PR can merge, and what counts toward "can", is configured
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per repo in its branch-protection settings — not a fact true of every
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hive or every repo. The pieces a repo *can* require:
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- **CI is green** — the repo's required status checks pass on the
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PR's current head commit, if the repo requires any.
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- **Requested reviews are `APPROVED`** — and whether a review is
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invalidated by a later commit ("stale") is itself a setting
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(Forgejo's "dismiss stale approvals" branch-protection option), not
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universal behavior.
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- **Someone with write access has armed the PR to merge** — a manual
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merge once the required conditions hold, or Forgejo's auto-merge
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(merges automatically the moment the other required conditions are
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met).
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Where these are required, they're independent of each other. A
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reviewer only ever owns the review-approval piece — CI resolves (or
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doesn't) on its own regardless of what a review says, and merge-arming
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is someone else's call.
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## Reviewers: submit the verdict, don't gate it on CI
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Submit `hive-forge pr-reviews <pr> --approve` or `--request-changes`
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as soon as you've finished checking the diff — don't hold it back
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waiting for CI to go green first. Mention CI's current state in the
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review body if it's relevant (e.g. "approving; `nix flake check` is
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still running"), but don't gate the formal verdict on it: CI isn't a
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signal a reviewer waits on, it's a separate condition that resolves
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independently.
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## What arming auto-merge actually means
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Auto-merge isn't "no human ever looked at this." Whoever arms it has
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already judged the PR sound at a coarse level — the signal it sends is
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roughly *"apart from maybe minor tweaks a reviewer can still catch,
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I think this is fine."* That's the human-in-the-loop step, and it
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already happened. No large changes are expected to surface after
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that point — a reviewer's job past that point is to flag it if one
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does, not to assume none ever will.
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The practical consequence for a reviewer: on a repo where auto-merge
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may already be armed before your review lands, a plain `APPROVED` can
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be the last step before the merge actually happens, with no further
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review pass after yours. That's a reason to actually finish checking
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before approving — not a reason to hesitate over every small thing.
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Genuine, substantive doubt (a claim you haven't verified, a real
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correctness question) is worth a `request-changes` or a clarifying
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comment before approving; a stray style nit isn't the same category.
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## Re-review after a repo requires it
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Where a repo dismisses stale approvals on a new commit, a review you
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already gave stops counting the moment a follow-up commit lands — even
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one whose message reads as trivial ("just a wording fix", "just
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trimming comments"). Re-diff and re-verify before submitting a fresh
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verdict; don't take a small-sounding commit message as an accurate
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description of the diff.
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