A reviewer needs to understand the problem, the change, and the evidence that it works. A large diff becomes easier only when its purpose stays clear.
State the behavior
Describe the trigger and the expected result in plain language. Explain what a user or maintainer will notice. Keep unrelated formatting and cleanup out of the same change when they obscure the main decision.
Provide useful evidence
List the relevant checks and their limits. A passing test command is helpful, but so is a concrete description of a manually checked edge case. Do not imply broad coverage from a narrow check.
Review your own diff
Look for accidental files, debug output, and comments that describe an abandoned approach. Rewrite the description around the final implementation. A focused pull request makes both approval and later investigation easier.
State the change in one sentence
Describe the user-visible problem and the behavior after the fix. Keep unrelated cleanup in a separate change unless it is necessary to make this one understandable. A reviewer should be able to tell what success means before reading implementation details.
Make evidence easy to inspect
Include the relevant test result, a screenshot for a visual change, and any migration or rollout note. Explain what you tested and what remains unverified. Do not paste secrets, customer records, or large unrelated logs into the review.
Help the next owner
Call out compatibility changes, configuration updates, and recovery steps. Use a checklist only for checks that matter to this change. Once feedback is addressed, summarize the final behavior so the record remains useful after the conversation is forgotten.
An example to adapt
A menu keyboard fix can include the interaction change, the focused test, and a short recording. A separate typography cleanup probably deserves its own review. Keeping the change together only when the evidence depends on it makes the result easier to assess.
Put it into practice
Choose one step from this article, try it on a representative project, and record what you learn before changing the wider workflow.
This is general editorial guidance rather than a hands-on product test; verify platform-specific details in current primary documentation.
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