Install and use

Working with reviews

Ask for a review, recognise Wachiman's comments, and what happens when you reply to a finding.

The default workflow reviews a pull request when it opens or leaves draft. If your caller file lists synchronize, as the current template does, each later push to an open pull request is reviewed too, covering only the commits that are new since the last complete review. Otherwise, and at any time, the configured operator asks for a review by commenting /wachi review on the pull request. Wachiman is advisory throughout; its comments never approve, request changes or block a merge.

After you push changes or reply to a finding

After a complete, unscoped review has recorded a commit, push your changes and reply in the finding’s thread. The next review, started by a push (when your caller lists synchronize) or by the operator’s /wachi review, can then consider trusted replies in its unresolved finding threads. Without that recorded commit — for example after a partial or scoped review — it does not load earlier threads.

A thread reply alone does not start a run. The caller workflow listens to pull request comments, not to replies inside review threads.
A request on an unchanged head does nothing. An unscoped /wachi review on a commit that was already reviewed answers “Already reviewed” and stops before it reads any thread. Push a change first, or name specific paths in the request.
Only trusted replies reach the reviewer. On a public repository anyone can reply in a thread, so the engine passes on only replies from people with an owner, member or collaborator association on the repository, and only in threads it opened itself during an earlier review.

Replies are handled only during a later review that has work to do, and the engine loads at most the first 100 review threads and the first 30 comments of each.

The command reference lists the commands.

Telling it apart from other bots

With the default workflow token, reviews appear as github-actions[bot], an identity other workflows may also use. Current Wachiman comments begin with 👮 Wachiman, usually followed on the same line by the finding or the coverage text. Older versions of the engine used a different format, and a visible prefix is a convention, not proof of who wrote a comment.

Incremental re-review

After a complete, unscoped review, an unscoped request normally reviews only the changes since the commit recorded in that review. If history has diverged, for example after a force push, the whole pull request is reviewed again. Partial or scoped reviews do not move that recorded commit, and nothing guarantees that a finding is never raised twice.

Resolving a thread

You resolve threads. Nothing is blocked while one is open, so there is no negotiation to win before merging — a finding you disagree with is a finding you close.