Lead a large pull request with its core change and keep formatting noise out of the review

A guided review splits a large diff into chapters in the order the work was reasoned through.

Prompt

Evaluate and apply this CI technique to my repository: Lead a large pull request with its core change and keep formatting noise out of the review.

A guided review splits a large diff into chapters in the order the work was reasoned through.

Read the technique and its source-backed company examples: https://starsling.dev/ci-playbooks/techniques/guided-review-order.md

Inspect this repository’s CI workflows, build and test commands, dependencies, and recent run timings. Identify where this technique applies and explain the expected benefit using this repository’s evidence.
Measure a baseline from recent comparable runs: elapsed time, queue time, runner minutes and failures where available. If data is unavailable, say what cannot be measured.
Compare relevant company approaches, checking prerequisites, platform differences and tradeoffs. Rank applicable options by evidence, fit and measurable opportunity; do not present company results as predictions for this repo.
Recommend the smallest safe change, show what checks and fallback paths remain, and ASK ME WHICH CHANGE TO APPROVE BEFORE EDITING ANY FILES.
Only after approval, work on a new feature branch, make one reversible change, and open a reviewable pull request. Never merge or push to a default or protected branch.
Keep required checks, test coverage, deployment and release behavior intact. Validate the change and compare equivalent runs where possible; report limitations and what should be monitored after merge.

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How Linear used this technique

Read what Linear changed and follow the original sources.

Lead a large pull request with its core change and keep formatting noise out of the review

Translated to GitHub Actions

What Linear built: Linear's Diffs break a pull request into chapters, with the core of the change first and structural highlighting that strips formatting changes.
Your GitHub Actions version: A pull request description an agent writes in reading order, with formatting-only changes in their own commit.

Linear's Diffs break a pull request into chapters that follow the order the work was reasoned through: the core of the change first, then its consequences, with auxiliary changes and glue code kept separate. Structural diff highlighting strips the formatting changes, so what is left on the page is the actual change. In a repository without Diffs, the same order comes from a pull request description an agent writes and a formatting-only change in its own commit.

A 2,000-line PR becomes legible in a single sitting. Source

Use it when: Large pull requests, often written by agents, are reviewed in file-system order with formatting changes mixed into the substantive edits.
Before applying it: The description is a guide, and the diff itself stays complete. Formatting-only changes go in their own commit, so blame and revert stay clean.
GitHub Actions adaptation: Compare the source system with your own workflow before applying this translation.

How Linear used this technique

Lead a large pull request with its core change and keep formatting noise out of the review

Company Playbooks