Review Pull Request

Review workflow for pull requests in open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io. The contributing guide and the per-check decoder in pr-checks.md are the authoritative sources — when this skill drifts from them, trust them.

For blog-specific rules (gh-url-hash, author front matter, publish-date gating), defer to the sibling review-blog-post skill. For label drafting guidance, defer to draft-issue.

Arguments {#arguments}

• If $ARGUMENTS is empty, ask for a PR number or URL.
• If $ARGUMENTS is a GitHub URL containing /pull/, extract the numeric PR number after /pull/.
• If $ARGUMENTS starts with #, strip the # and use the digits.
• If $ARGUMENTS is a bare number, use it.
• Otherwise, stop and ask for a valid PR number or URL.

When to use

• Reviewing a PR in open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io.
• Debugging a CI check failure on a PR.
• Preparing your own PR for submission.

Workflow

1. Setup

Pull metadata, diff, and checks; classify changed files:

gh pr view <N> --json title,body,files,reviews,labels,author,isDraft,headRepositoryOwner
gh pr diff <N>
gh pr checks <N>

Group files into content/en/blog/**, content/en/docs/**, content/<lang>/**, data/registry/**, .github/**, scripts/**, or config — classification drives which CI checks matter and which rules apply.

2. Walk CI checks

For each failing check, match <workflow-name> / <job-name> against pr-checks.md — every check has a section describing what it validates and the local fix command. Caveats:

• Link checking is sharded (en / locales-A-to-M / locales-N-to-Z); a single failing shard does not necessarily block merge — read the failure.
• Fork PRs can hit token-scope limits that look like check failures but are permissions artifacts. Read the log before concluding.
• Netlify Deploy Preview failures: open Details for the build log before reasoning about them.

3. Verify process rules

Pre-merge approval

• CLA: every commit author email is covered (CNCF EasyCLA) — pr-checks.md#easy-cla.
• Linked issue: PR references an issue labeled triage:accepted. Exceptions: auto-update PRs and hotfixes by maintainers/approvers — sig-practices.md#prs.
• Co-owned PRs: docs approver + SIG/locale approver — sig-practices.md#co-owned-prs and #translation-prs.

Content origin

• Submodules: non-maintainer PRs should not touch them; a maintainer fixes before merge — sig-practices.md#general.
• Locale span: semantic changes are per-locale; editorial cross-locale edits are OK and append # patched to default_lang_commit — localization.md#prs-should-not-span-locales and #patch-locale-links.

Branch state

• Branch freshness: authors should not continuously rebase — maintainers update before merge — sig-practices.md#general.
• Stale handling: stale after 21 days inactivity; never auto-closed — sig-practices.md#prs.

4. Review content

For docs PRs (content/en/docs/**):

• Front matter. Valid YAML; appropriate title, linkTitle, weight, description; Hugo-specific fields intact.
• Terminology. "OpenTelemetry" one word; "OTel" only after first full mention; signal names lowercase (traces, metrics, logs); component names cased (SDK, API, Collector); proper nouns cased. Enforced by textlint via .textlintrc.yml.
• Link references. Prefer collapsed form [text][] over shortcut [text]; enforced by scripts/_md-rules/no-shortcut-ref-link/.
• Markdown extensions. GitHub alerts and Obsidian callouts are OK.
• Internal links. Use Hugo ref / relref or paths starting with /docs/...; never full https://opentelemetry.io URLs.
• Code blocks carry a language tag; images carry meaningful alt text.

For blog PRs (content/en/blog/**), defer to the review-blog-post skill.

5. Final pass and output

Walk this checklist before writing the review:

CI and process

• Easy CLA green (or author has a fix path).
• Netlify preview builds.
• Each failing check-* assessed against pr-checks.md#checks.
• Linked issue is triage:accepted (or this is an auto/hotfix PR).
• Does not span locales with semantic changes — or uses # patched for editorial cross-locale edits.
• First-time-contributor AI checklist in the PR description is filled in and looks human-written.
• No unrelated changes bundled.

Labels

• Auto-applied labels look correct (sig/lang/blog/registry/i18n); none added by hand.
• ready-to-be-merged / missing:* not touched manually.
• sig-approval-missing added if docs approval landed without SIG approval on a co-owned PR.

Content

• Front matter valid; terminology consistent; code blocks tagged; images have alt text; internal links use paths or Hugo refs (not opentelemetry.io URLs); no shortcut-form reference links.

Refcache and links

• refcache.json updates (if any) committed in the PR.
• No hand-edits to refcache.json.
• Unreachable-but-valid URLs use ?link-check=no (see Refcache).

Then structure the review as:

• CI Status Summary — one line per check (pass/fail/skip); call out fork-PR permissions artifacts separately from real failures.
• Required Changes (Blocking) — issues that must be fixed before merge. Cite a file or check name for each.
• Suggested Improvements (Non-blocking) — terminology, cross-link opportunities, phrasing.
• Positive Feedback — short but present.

Refcache {#refcache}

static/refcache.json is a 1MB+ cache of external-link status codes. npm run check:links updates it as a side effect — authors commit the updated file themselves (pr-checks.md#build-and-check-links). The Links / REFCACHE updates? job fails if the on-branch cache is stale relative to what the link check produced.

Do not hand-edit refcache.json. If a URL returns a non-200 for server reasons (blocked bot, LinkedIn 999, …), append ?link-check=no (or &link-check=no) to the URL — pr-checks.md#handling-valid-external-links. Maintainers can validate 4xx entries via ./scripts/double-check-refcache-4XX.mjs.

For resolving merge/rebase conflicts in refcache.json, see the resolve-refcache-conflicts skill.

References

Source-of-truth files — read on demand:

• pr-checks.md — per-check decoder (what each check validates, how to fix).
• npm-scripts.md — full npm run catalog.
• pull-requests.md, sig-practices.md, localization.md, issues.md — process rules deep-linked above.