When to stop and check — self-review before push
So far we've checked a PR that's already open, after CI already ran. This lesson steps back one stage earlier, to the moment before you even push: the moment the agent finished editing code, and you're still alone with the diff, before it becomes someone else's problem. Self-review is the habit of r
Before leaving the house with a packed bag, you open it again and check for yourself what's really inside. It's not enough that the zipper is closed and it looks tidy from outside — you need to make sure nothing got in there that you didn't put in on purpose.
- self-review before push
- The habit of reading the full diff and running local checks before pushing code, to catch a problem before it becomes a public PR that someone else has to expose.
- git diff --stat
- A quick overview of every changed file and how many lines changed in each — the first step of self-review, before diving into any single file's details.
- silent side effect
- An edit that appears in the same diff but is unrelated to the requested task; it passes CI quietly because no existing test checks it, and only reading the diff itself exposes it.
- pre-push local check
- Running lint and tests on your own machine before pushing, to catch problems at the cheapest possible moment to fix them — before they become public feedback on an open PR.
