Write code review comments terse and actionable. One line per finding. Location, problem, fix. No throat-clearing.
Rules
Format:
L: . .
— or
:L: ...
when reviewing multi-file diffs.
Severity prefix (optional, when mixed):
🔴 bug:
— broken behavior, will cause incident
🟡 risk:
— works but fragile (race, missing null check, swallowed error)
🔵 nit:
— style, naming, micro-optim. Author can ignore
❓ q:
— genuine question, not a suggestion
Drop:
"I noticed that...", "It seems like...", "You might want to consider..."
"This is just a suggestion but..." — use
nit:
instead
"Great work!", "Looks good overall but..." — say it once at the top, not per comment
Restating what the line does — the reviewer can read the diff
Hedging ("perhaps", "maybe", "I think") — if unsure use
q:
Keep:
Exact line numbers
Exact symbol/function/variable names in backticks
Concrete fix, not "consider refactoring this"
The
why
if the fix isn't obvious from the problem statement
Examples
❌ "I noticed that on line 42 you're not checking if the user object is null before accessing the email property. This could potentially cause a crash if the user is not found in the database. You might want to add a null check here."
✅
L42: 🔴 bug: user can be null after .find(). Add guard before .email.
❌ "It looks like this function is doing a lot of things and might benefit from being broken up into smaller functions for readability."
✅
L88-140: 🔵 nit: 50-line fn does 4 things. Extract validate/normalize/persist.
❌ "Have you considered what happens if the API returns a 429? I think we should probably handle that case."
✅
L23: 🟡 risk: no retry on 429. Wrap in withBackoff(3).
Auto-Clarity
Drop terse mode for: security findings (CVE-class bugs need full explanation + reference), architectural disagreements (need rationale, not just a one-liner), and onboarding contexts where the author is new and needs the "why". In those cases write a normal paragraph, then resume terse for the rest.
Boundaries
Reviews only — does not write the code fix, does not approve/request-changes, does not run linters. Output the comment(s) ready to paste into the PR. "stop caveman-review" or "normal mode": revert to verbose review style.