Migrate to daemon-powered reviews

Charlie’s existing PR reviews use policy managed by us. Daemon-powered reviews move that policy into your repository, where your team can inspect and change it through normal pull requests. You decide when Charlie reviews, which perspectives apply, what evidence feedback requires, and what Charlie may publish. Charlie handles running that policy against the current pull request and delivering the review on GitHub.

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What changes

The GitHub experience remains familiar. Charlie still reviews pull requests, and your team can still request a review by adding CharlieHelps as a reviewer or mentioning him in a pull request comment. The main change is who controls the review policy: Policy changes take effect after they reach the repository’s default branch. Charlie loads the updated policy within a few minutes.

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Start with the reference policy

We recommend starting with the reference pr-review daemon so you have a known baseline for migration. It is based on Charlie’s existing review behavior, with focused correctness and repository guidance perspectives, an evidence bar for findings, and rules that avoid low-value feedback such as personal style preferences or problems the pull request did not introduce. It 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.

You can request another review explicitly or change the cadence later. 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.

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How reviews are routed during the transition

You do not lose review coverage while the new experience rolls out.

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Migrate your repository to daemon-powered reviews

1. Follow Set up PR reviews to install the reference daemon. Installing from the Charlie dashboard or asking Charlie creates a pull request for your team to review.
2. Review the starting policy. Before merging the installation pull request, you can optionally:
   • Add A new commit is pushed to an open non-draft pull request. to watch in DAEMON.md if you want Charlie to review every new commit pushed to the pull request.
   • Update Review outcomes in DAEMON.md to allow Charlie to submit APPROVE or REQUEST_CHANGES reviews in addition to COMMENT. Define when each outcome should be used.
3. Merge the installation pull request into the repository’s default branch.
4. Allow a few minutes for Charlie to load the policy. Observe a few representative reviews in GitHub and Dashboard Activity.
5. Keep the reference policy if it works for your team. When you find a specific behavior to change, use Configure PR reviews and adjust one decision at a time.

Reviewing every push increases usage. Cost controls describes a middle ground that reviews only substantial updates. If you are not ready to migrate, agent-powered reviews will continue during the transition. Install pr-review before the transition ends to keep automatic reviews running.

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Next steps