A free, open code review survival kit — checklists, templates, guides, and a live interactive tracker for anyone who reviews pull requests.
Most "code review checklists" online are a single Gist with twelve bullet points. This is the opposite: a complete, opinionated kit covering the entire review lifecycle — from writing the PR description, to reviewing it line by line, to giving feedback that doesn't start a fight in the comments thread.
It's built for three kinds of people:
- Developers reviewing their first PRs, who want a structure so they're not just nodding along.
- Senior engineers and tech leads, who want a shared standard the whole team can point to instead of re-explaining the same comment for the hundredth time.
- Teams setting up a review process from scratch, who want templates they can fork and adapt instead of writing one from a blank page.
Everything here is framework-agnostic, language-agnostic, and evergreen — there's nothing in this repo that goes stale when a JavaScript framework changes its API.
The checklist isn't just a markdown file you have to imagine ticking off. It's a real interactive tool with a "Review Readiness" score, collapsible categories, and progress that's saved in your browser:
👉 projekta2.github.io/pr-review-canvas
No install, no account, no tracking. Open it, check things off, export your notes when you're done.
If this is useful to you, a star takes one second and is the single biggest thing that helps other developers find it.
| Path | What it is |
|---|---|
checklists/pr-review-checklist.md |
The full 51-item checklist, organized into 8 categories, with a "why" for every item |
docs/index.html |
The live interactive checklist served on GitHub Pages — same checklist, works offline |
checklists/interactive-checklist.html |
A self-contained, downloadable offline copy of the interactive tool |
checklists/pr-review-checklist-template.md |
A blank, editable version for teams who want to adapt it to their own standards |
templates/pr-template.md |
A lightweight PR description template for everyday changes |
templates/pr-template-advanced.md |
A fuller template for complex, high-risk, or cross-team changes |
guides/for-beginners.md |
A step-by-step guide to reviewing your first PRs without feeling lost |
guides/for-experts.md |
Techniques for reviewing fast at scale, and when to delegate or automate |
guides/how-to-give-feedback.md |
Constructive feedback patterns, phrases to use, and phrases to retire |
guides/how-to-receive-feedback.md |
The author's side: how to take review feedback without taking it personally |
examples/good-pr-example.md |
An annotated example of a well-written PR, and why it works |
examples/bad-pr-example.md |
An annotated example of a poorly-written PR, and how to fix each issue |
examples/annotated-review-example.md |
A full review transcript, comment by comment, with reasoning |
resources/code-review-antipatterns.md |
The recurring ways code review goes wrong, on both sides of the diff |
resources/notion-template.md |
A ready-to-paste version of the checklist for Notion |
resources/obsidian-template.md |
A ready-to-paste version of the checklist for Obsidian |
resources/linear-template.md |
A ready-to-paste version of the checklist for Linear |
resources/jira-template.md |
A ready-to-paste version of the checklist for Jira |
resources/github-projects-template.md |
A guide to set up a GitHub Projects board for tracking PR reviews with the Canvas methodology |
ROADMAP.md |
What's planned next for the kit |
CHANGELOG.md |
Version history — what changed and when |
As an individual reviewer: bookmark the live checklist and run through it on your next PR. It takes about five minutes and it will catch things a quick skim won't.
As a team: fork this repo, open checklists/pr-review-checklist-template.md, and trim or extend it until it matches how your team actually works. Drop templates/pr-template.md into your .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md so every PR starts from the same baseline.
As a newcomer: read guides/for-beginners.md first. It's written for the moment right after you've been assigned your first review and have no idea where to start.
A code review checklist isn't bureaucracy — it's a substitute for the senior engineer standing over your shoulder who isn't always available. The categories in this kit (context, architecture, code quality, testing, performance & security, documentation, standards, final read) map to the actual sequence an experienced reviewer's brain runs through, just made explicit so it's teachable.
flowchart LR
A[Author opens a PR] --> B[Author fills out the PR template]
B --> C[Reviewer opens the Review Canvas]
C --> D{Walks the checklist by category}
D --> E[Leaves specific, constructive feedback]
E --> F{Changes requested?}
F -- yes --> B
F -- no --> G[PR merged with confidence]
This kit grew out of the same review fatigue that led to building PR Focus AI Pro — a browser-side extension that triages and summarizes GitHub pull requests for the human reviewer, instead of trying to replace them with a bot that leaves automated comments. If you find yourself running this checklist on PRs every day, that's the gap it fills. (Gumroad page · one-time license.)
The technical decisions behind these tools — including the actual reasoning, bugs, and trade-offs, not just the highlight reel — are written up in Build Logs, an engineering journal documenting how Projekta2's tools get built.
Curious what's coming next, or what already shipped? See ROADMAP.md for planned additions and CHANGELOG.md for version history.
This kit gets better with more reviewers' opinions in it. New checklist items, sharper feedback phrasing, translated versions, or a template for a workflow this doesn't cover yet — all welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT — use it, fork it, adapt it for your team, no attribution required (though a star is always appreciated).
If this saved your team a round-trip on a PR, consider starring the repo — it helps other developers find it.
