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Every repository has its own definition of useful review. Charlie’s pr-review daemon lets your team define that system in your repository and change it as your codebase evolves. You control judgment; Charlie handles the moving system. Your policy defines when Charlie reviews, which perspectives matter for a change, what evidence feedback requires, how follow-up reviews behave, and what Charlie may publish. Charlie applies that policy to the current pull request and combines the relevant perspectives into one coherent review. A single broad review pass has to carry every concern at once. Focused review lanes give each perspective a clear job, its own applicability guidance, and an evidence bar. Charlie selects the lanes that are useful for the change instead of running every installed perspective on every pull request.

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How daemon-powered reviews work

When a review starts, Charlie loads the policy from your repository’s default branch and gathers the current pull request context. That context includes the diff, changed files, checks, discussion, prior feedback, and relevant repository guidance. Charlie inventories the installed review lanes and selects the ones that apply to the change. The selected lanes investigate their focused perspectives independently and in parallel against the same current pull request. Charlie then applies the review-wide policy in DAEMON.md to their candidate findings, reconciles overlapping or previously reported feedback, and produces one coherent review or the configured clean result. The policy lives in ordinary Markdown:
DAEMON.md defines when reviews run and the rules shared by the whole review. Each direct Markdown file under references/lanes/ defines one focused perspective, including when it applies and what evidence a finding needs. Your team changes these files through normal pull requests. After a change reaches the default branch, Charlie loads the updated policy within a few minutes.

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What your team controls and what Charlie handles

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Start from the reference policy

The pr-review reference daemon gives your team a working starting policy. It begins with two lanes:
  • Correctness looks for reachable behavior errors, broken state or lifecycle invariants, and unhandled failure paths.
  • Repository guidance checks the change against applicable repository instructions and documented contracts.
The reference policy reviews when:
  • A non-draft pull request is opened.
  • A draft pull request is marked ready for review.
  • CharlieHelps is requested as a reviewer.
  • A pull request comment requests a review from CharlieHelps.
It does not review every new commit by default. Your team can request another review explicitly or configure a different cadence. The reference policy publishes findings with a COMMENT review. When a completed review is clean, Charlie adds one +1 reaction to the pull request body instead of posting an empty review or summary. Your team can change the cadence, lanes, evidence rules, presentation, and allowed review outcomes as its needs evolve.

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Get started

Most teams should install the reference policy, observe a few representative reviews, and then change one decision at a time.

Set up PR reviews

Install the reference daemon and merge its policy into your default branch.

Configure PR reviews

Change cadence, review perspectives, evidence rules, and review output.

Control review costs

Tune review frequency and scope after observing representative reviews.

Troubleshoot PR reviews

Diagnose missing, unexpected, or noisy reviews.
Migrating from agent-powered reviews? Read Migrate to daemon-powered reviews to understand what changes and how review coverage works during the transition.