Review a branch by what it means

Problem. A pull request is a pile of changed lines. Reviewing it means rebuilding, in your head, which feature each line belongs to, what depends on it, and whether it broke a rule your project already had.

The Review screen reads two git refs and shows what the change means: the changed units grouped by feature and part, what each one now does, and five indicators computed from your own architecture.yml. No model, no network, no GitHub login: local branches are first-class.

This page shows the Cockpit only. The same report from a terminal is in the CLI examples; the engine behind it is in the Core examples.

Do this#

1. Pick a branch#

Git in the top bar (the /review route) lists the current project's local branches compared against a base (main by default), riskiest first: branches with more indicators needing attention, then more findings. A legend on the right explains every badge (scope, rule regressions, unexplained changes, public API, flow changed).

2. Read what the change does#

Open a branch. The Browser pane groups the changed files by feature, part or file; the stage says in one line what each changed unit now does, read from the code and not from the description; the Tools pane shows the indicators.

The five indicators:

Indicator	What it tells you
Scope	what the plan declared versus what the change touched (grey "Not measured" when there is no plan, which is normal)
Unexplained changes	changed files with no import path to the rest of the change
Rule regressions	violations that are new on this branch; existing ones are counted as a number, never blamed on it
Public API	exports that stopped or started being public, and who imports them
Flow changed	which routes through a workflow appeared or disappeared, in plain English

3. Findings: fix by machine, or decide#

The Findings tab splits every finding into two groups that are never mixed: ones a Construct command can fix mechanically, shown with the exact command, and ones that need a human decision. Review is read-only: it shows the command and never runs it.

Pick a saved plan from Compare with a plan and the scope check compares what that plan declared with what changed. If something goes wrong the screen says what happened and what to do next; a repository with no other branch says so; a change larger than 200 files shows a summary and which checks still ran.

You get#

You get	Evidence above
Review that knows your rules	rule regressions, new versus pre-existing
Meaning, not lines	"what this change actually does"
Mechanical and human findings kept apart	the Findings tab
No writes	read-only; the command is shown, not run

Why it matters#

You review what a change means and decide on a short list, instead of rebuilding the picture from changed lines.

Checked against commit d23283f on 2026-09-23. Screenshots come from the project's own Playwright runs of these screens.