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Review agent should use COMMENT verdict when all findings are human-only #1110

Description

@fullsend-ai-retro

What happened

On PR #6805, the review agent ran twice (run 33408276038, run 33466492153). Both times, the only finding was [protected-path] — flagging that .github/workflows/ modifications require human approval. Both times, the review agent submitted a CHANGES_REQUESTED verdict. Each CHANGES_REQUESTED event triggered a fix agent dispatch (run 33409570755, run 33467453381), both of which failed immediately because there is nothing for the fix agent to resolve — the finding is inherently human-only.

What could go better

The review agent's verdict selection does not distinguish between findings that are code-fixable (bugs, style issues, missing error handling) and findings that require human judgment (protected-path approval, policy decisions). Using CHANGES_REQUESTED for human-only findings has two negative effects: (1) it triggers fix agent dispatch for unfixable findings, wasting runner time and creating misleading failed workflow runs, and (2) it blocks merge-queue auto-merge on PRs where the only outstanding item is a human approval gate that the review agent itself cannot satisfy. Confidence is high — this pattern is directly observable in the PR timeline and will recur on every PR that modifies only protected paths without other actionable findings. The closest existing issue (agents#663) addresses the complementary case where protected-path findings coexist with fixable findings, proposing that the fixable findings should retain CHANGES_REQUESTED. This proposal covers the distinct case where ALL findings are human-only.

Proposed change

In the review agent's verdict selection logic (likely in the PR review skill or the review agent definition in fullsend-ai/agents), add a check: when all findings in the review are tagged as human-only (e.g., protected-path, or a new human_required category), submit the review as COMMENT instead of CHANGES_REQUESTED. The findings themselves should still be posted — they serve as informational alerts for human reviewers — but the verdict should not imply that an automated fix is expected. This is complementary to agents#663, which handles the mixed-findings case. Together they form a complete verdict-selection policy: (a) all findings human-only → COMMENT, (b) mix of human-only and fixable → CHANGES_REQUESTED (only for fixable findings, per #663), (c) all findings fixable → CHANGES_REQUESTED (current behavior, unchanged).

Validation criteria

On the next 3 PRs that modify only protected paths (e.g., .github/ files) with no other actionable findings, the review agent should submit a COMMENT review instead of CHANGES_REQUESTED. No fix agent dispatch should be triggered by these reviews. Verify by checking the review verdict in the GitHub API and confirming no pull_request_review-triggered fix workflow runs appear.


Generated by retro agent from fullsend-ai/fullsend#6805

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