GitHub PR Checklist

Turn pull requests into an actionable review checklist.
A focused GitHub workflow tool for reviewers who want signal, not summary theater.

Install | Usage | Scenarios

---

Requirements

GitHub PR Checklist is a Codex skill.

• Live PR review from a PR URL or owner/repo#number requires GitHub connector access in the host environment.
• If connector access is unavailable, the skill still works with pasted diff or patch input.

Why this exists

Modern PR review is noisy. Most automated summaries simply retell the diff and add more reading to a process that already has too much of it.

GitHub PR Checklist is built for the next decision:

• Review faster by focusing on behavior changes instead of line-by-line narration
• Miss fewer risky changes by surfacing rollout, state, and edge-case concerns
• Avoid fluffy summaries by keeping every section tied to an action or verification step

Who this is for

• Engineers who review pull requests every day and want faster approval decisions
• Founders and small teams who need better review signal without adding heavy process
• Open-source maintainers triaging large or noisy pull requests
• Anyone who has felt that PR summaries explained the patch without helping the review

Why this beats PR diff summaries

Typical PR summaries stop at "what changed."

This project is optimized for "what should I do next?"

• It prioritizes risk over retelling the diff
• It pulls unresolved reviewer concerns into the checklist
• It suggests concrete tests instead of generic reassurance
• It stays compact enough to scan before approving or requesting changes

The Transformation

From diff noise

Large PRs bury signal inside changed files, unresolved comments, and check results.

To decision-ready output

The tool turns that PR context into a compact checklist:

## Actionable PR Checklist
- Critical Points Found: 2
- Priority Labels: Rollout Safety; Auth Regression

## Key Changes
- Refactors auth middleware to initialize a secure request context.

## Risks
1. Rollout Safety: deployment order may matter if the database migration has not landed before deploy.
2. Auth Regression: the new failure path could leak privileged behavior if admin checks are incomplete.

## Questions
- Does this change require new environment variables or secret rotation?

## Suggested Tests
- Verify admin privilege elevation in staging.
- Exercise the new request context under concurrency.

Before and After

Before

18 changed files
6 review comments
checks pending

- switched reads to the new balance column
- added an async backfill job
- touched retry logic and admin-only flows

Need to review:
- whether rollout order matters
- whether the new and old columns can drift
- whether retries could duplicate writes

After

## Actionable PR Checklist
- Critical Points Found: 3
- Priority Labels: Rollout Safety; Data Consistency; Retry Logic

## Key Changes
- Adds an async backfill job for the new balance column.
- Switches reads from the old field to the new field after migration.
- Updates retry behavior around lock timeouts.

## Risks
1. Rollout Safety: reads may switch before the backfill is complete.
2. Data Consistency: old and new balance fields could drift during rollout.
3. Retry Logic: lock-timeout retries may replay writes unexpectedly.

## Suggested Tests
- Run a staged rollout with partial backfill completion.
- Compare old and new balance fields before and after retry paths.

Scenario Case Studies

1. Backend and infrastructure migration

PR scope: adding columns, backfilling jobs, switching read paths.
Checklist focus: rollout safety, data consistency, and rollback procedures.

2. Frontend auth refactor

PR scope: moving auth checks into shared hooks and changing redirect behavior.
Checklist focus: hidden regressions, session expiry edge cases, and manual verification steps.

3. Review-heavy PR

PR scope: checks are green, but the review thread is crowded with unresolved comments.
Checklist focus: condensing reviewer concerns into the next small set of actions.

What it reads

When GitHub connector access is available, the tool uses:

• PR metadata
• changed files and diff
• review comments
• check status

If direct access is unavailable, it falls back to a pasted diff or patch and preserves the same output contract.

Install

Copy the skill folder into your Codex skills directory:

$CODEX_HOME/skills/github-pr-checklist
~/.codex/skills/github-pr-checklist

The directory to copy is skills/github-pr-checklist. To review a live pull request from a URL or PR identifier, the host environment also needs GitHub connector access.

Usage

Use $github-pr-checklist on https://github.com/acme/api/pull/481.

Use $github-pr-checklist on acme/web#912 and focus on approval blockers.

Use $github-pr-checklist on this diff and include a short reply draft.

Repository Layout

skills/github-pr-checklist/
  SKILL.md
  agents/openai.yaml
  references/

docs/assets/
  demo-before-after.svg
  social-preview.png

---

Built for engineers who value signal over noise.