Review

anode review inspects local changes with a read-only profile. It is for finding concrete bugs, risky behavior changes, and missing tests before you commit.

Commands

anode review
anode review "focus on error handling"
anode review --base main
anode review --base main --checks
anode review --base main --stream-json

Flags:

Flag	Use
--base <ref>	Diff against a base git ref.
--checks	Run project check files.
--profile <name>	Review profile override. Defaults to review.
--model provider/model	Model override for the review runs.
--max-turns <n>	Turn limit for each review run.
`—approval ask	auto
--stream-json	Emit newline-delimited run events.

review keeps its read-only default profile unless you override --profile.

What Review Reads

Anode builds review context from:

• git status --short
• unstaged diff
• staged diff
• --base <ref> diff when provided
• diff stats
• changed file list
• untracked file names and bounded text previews

Tracked diff text is limited to 120,000 runes. Untracked previews include up to 10 files, each read up to 16 KiB. If there are no changed files, review prints Nothing to review.

Project Checks

Checks are Markdown files under .agents/checks/*.md. Anode also looks for nearest scoped .agents/checks directories above changed files.

Example:

---
name: security
description: Check for security regressions
severity-default: high
paths: "**/*.go", "**/*.ts"
tools: read, finder, web_search
---

Look for command injection, path traversal, auth bypasses, secret exposure, and
unsafe input handling. Avoid style comments.

Supported frontmatter:

Field	Use
name	Check name. Defaults to file name without extension.
description	One-line description. Defaults to first body line.
severity-default or severity	Severity label passed into the check prompt and events.
paths or path	Comma-separated or bracketed glob list.
tools	Comma-separated or bracketed tool allowlist.

Check names cannot contain / or \. Check files larger than 64 KiB are truncated before parsing. Symlinked check files are rejected.

Check Execution

Without --stream-json, Anode runs the general review and then each applicable check in order.

With --stream-json, Anode emits a parent review run. The general review runs first. Applicable checks then run with bounded concurrency of 4, and their buffered event streams are replayed in deterministic order.

Each check receives:

• the review context
• the check body
• the optional focus text
• the requested tool allowlist, when set
• parent run linkage in JSON events

JSON Output

--stream-json uses the same event schema as headless execution. Review adds a parent run and child runs:

Event	Use
system.init	Parent review initialized.
run.started	Parent review run started.
child_run.started	General review or project check started.
child run events	Events from the general review or check run.
child_run.result	Child run finished.
result.final	Parent review finished.

Read-Only Behavior

The default review profile is read-only and exposes:

read, multi_read, finder, glob, grep, web_search, todo_read, code_review

When a language server is configured, lsp and get_diagnostics can also be available through the same read-only profile.

It does not expose file mutation tools.

Keep going:

• CLI reference
• Profiles
• Headless execution