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Use one bounded correction wave: gather the comments and required checks for the current pull request revision, validate material findings, make related accepted fixes together, then rerun checks and inspect the new diff. Merge, stop with unresolved risks stated, or open another specifically scoped wave only when new evidence or a material change in risk warrants it—not simply because an AI reviewer can run again.
What “one correction wave” means
A correction wave is a finite review-and-fix cycle: the team evaluates findings for one revision, corrects accepted related defects, and then judges the corrected revision against fresh evidence. It is a practical process pattern proposed in a 2026 DEV Community article, not a scientifically established optimum or a consensus standard. The article itself describes it as “a process pattern, not an experimentally proven optimum.” Read the proposal.
The stop rule is about evidence and scope, not a fixed number of bot invocations. Keep a human reviewer responsible for deciding what is in scope, whether a finding is supported, how it is disposed of, and whether the pull request is ready to merge.
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Run a bounded review cycle
- Collect the current evidence. Let the intended reviewers and required checks finish for the revision under review. Record the commit or revision so comments and check results can be tied to the same artifact.
- Normalize the comments. Group duplicates and distinguish actionable defect claims from questions, style preferences, and speculation. A comment is a candidate finding, not proof that the code is wrong.
- Validate material findings. For each substantial claim, record what is alleged, the path by which it could fail, the evidence, an owner, and a disposition. Reproduce the failure or otherwise validate the path before changing code. Close unsupported or duplicate items explicitly rather than silently treating them as accepted fixes.
- Correct related findings coherently. Batch accepted fixes when they address the same invariant or failure path. Keep unrelated changes out of the correction so the resulting diff remains reviewable.
- Re-run evidence on the corrected revision. Run the required deterministic checks against the new head, confirm their results belong to the revision being reviewed, and inspect the diff for intended changes and unintended side effects.
- Make a human disposition. Merge if the evidence and risk assessment support it; stop and name unresolved risks if they do not; or define a bounded next wave when new evidence justifies more work.
Decide whether another wave is justified
Open another cycle when the corrected revision produces meaningful new evidence—for example, a required test fails, a reviewer identifies a distinct material defect, or a reproduction changes the risk assessment. Before starting, state the trigger, in-scope findings, exact revision or artifact, required checks, owner, and exit condition. That makes the next cycle a response to a defined issue rather than an open-ended request to “review again.”
#1 Best Overall
Do not repeatedly rerun the same nondeterministic reviewer just to get a preferred answer. Distinguish a completed review with no finding from a review that was unavailable or incomplete, and cap automatic retries. Preserve a human-visible way to stop the cycle.
Choose among merge, stop, and another wave
| Decision | When it fits | What to establish |
|---|---|---|
| Merge | The material findings have dispositions, required checks pass on the current revision, and the reviewer accepts the remaining risk. | Confirm the checks apply to the revision that will be merged and that the final diff matches the intended correction. |
| Stop with risks named | Evidence is incomplete, a finding remains unresolved, or the team cannot responsibly claim the risk is acceptable. | State the unknown or unresolved risk and who owns the next decision; do not describe an unavailable review as a clean review. |
| Open a scoped next wave | New evidence reveals a distinct material issue or changes the risk assessment. | Specify the trigger, scope, artifact, checks, owner, and ending condition before requesting more review. |
These are situational decisions; the available evidence does not establish a universally best choice or prove that this process reduces review time or defects.
GitHub checks must match the revision being reviewed
For GitHub pull requests, required status checks must succeed on the latest commit SHA; a successful check from an earlier revision does not satisfy the requirement for the new head. Verify the commit associated with each required result after making corrections. GitHub also notes that workflows used as required checks in a merge queue need the merge_group event trigger. These are GitHub-specific configuration points, not universal rules for every hosting platform. See GitHub’s required status-check guidance.
Keep review automation inside security boundaries
GitHub documents that pull_request_target runs with elevated trust and access to repository secrets and tokens. Its guidance warns against checking out, building, or executing untrusted pull-request code in that privileged context. Review automation should have narrow permissions, and approval authority should be explicit: a reviewer should not have credentials that let it silently approve its own fixes. See GitHub’s security guidance for pull_request_target.
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Measure quality as well as speed
If a team evaluates this workflow, useful measures include time from first review to merge decision, distinct material findings that were validated, accepted findings converted into regression guards, repeated findings on unchanged behavior, corrections later reverted, and checks skipped, stale, or inconclusive. Treat these as suggested measures, not validated benchmarks. A shorter review or lower comment count is not automatically better if a defect was missed.
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