Review Work

When an issue reaches In Review, the agent has already reviewed it for spec compliance and code quality (see AI review). Now it’s your turn — architecture, product fit, and the judgment calls only you can make.

Starting a review

Issues ready for your review appear in the In Review queue on the Home screen. Click any item to start a review session.

The agent loads the issue, finds its PR, reads existing comments for context, and checks out the PR branch. It confirms the branch before starting: “Issue #42: Add user authentication. PR #50 on branch task/CATE-42-add-user-authentication. Ready to review.”

Drive the session

From there, you lead:

• Ask the agent to explain a specific function or design decision
• Request that it run the test suite or specific tests
• Ask about edge cases or security implications for a particular block of code
• Ask it to make fixes — it commits them directly to the PR branch
• Work through the manual verification steps from the issue’s test plan

The agent records significant observations and decisions as comments on the issue to build institutional memory for future agents working in the same area.

Three outcomes

Approve and merge: The agent pushes any uncommitted fixes, squash-merges the PR, moves the issue to Done, and closes it.

Request changes: The agent posts a detailed handoff comment with every issue found (including file and line references), then moves the issue back to To Do. The working agent picks it up and addresses the feedback.

Defer: The issue stays in In Review for a future session. Useful when you need more context, want a second opinion, or are interrupted mid-review.

Epic review

Epics follow a different cadence:

1. Sub-issue PRs target the epic branch, not main. Agent reviewers review each sub-issue PR individually (see AI review — Epic subtask PRs).
2. Passing sub-issue PRs are squash-merged to the epic branch automatically (or wait for your merge if cate:supervised).
3. When all sub-issues are complete, the epic’s tracking PR (epic branch to main) is marked ready.
4. You review the full epic via that tracking PR — all accumulated changes as one diff.
5. Merge the tracking PR to main to ship the entire feature.

This means you do one thorough review per epic rather than reviewing each sub-issue separately. Agent reviews catch mechanical issues along the way; your review focuses on the holistic feature.