review a pull request
You need a second pair of eyes on a diff—catch real bugs before merge without drowning in style nits.
recs
| model | best when | avoid when | cost vibe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sonnet-class | The diff touches auth, concurrency, data integrity, or subtle regressions. | You’re rubber-stamping a 12-line typo fix. | $$$ |
| Faster / cheaper cloud | High volume of small PRs; you want a first pass for missing tests and obvious holes. | The risk is in a rare race or a domain rule the model won’t know. | $ |
| Local mid | Private repos / offline review loops where the patch is mostly mechanical. | You need judgment on product intent or ambiguous failure modes. | ~free |
why
- PR review is mostly judgment: “is this wrong?” beats “is this pretty?”
- Cheap models flood you with nits; frontier earns it when the bug is quiet.
- Local is fine for private code if a human still owns the merge call.
- Pair with test-generation when the review’s real ask is “prove it.”