Approve PRs while leaving non-blocking comments simultaneously; trust your team to act on feedback without holding up the merge.
Key Takeaways
Default rule: if all your comments are nitpicks, suggestions, or questions, leave them and approve in the same action.
Conventional Comments labels (nitpick:, question:, suggestion:, issue (non-blocking):) make reviewer intent explicit and reduce ambiguity.
Auto-reset-on-push approval configs undercut this workflow; check repo settings before adopting it.
Auto-merge configs are a related footgun: approving triggers a merge before the author reads your comments.
Linters, formatters, and type checkers in CI eliminate entire categories of low-value review comments, making non-blocking approval more defensible.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters largely agreed on the workflow but flagged a missing side: PR authors rarely acknowledge comments, leaving reviewers unsure feedback was received at all.
A recurring thread argued that inline code comments outlast PR discussion threads and are more discoverable; observations about code health belong in the file, not the PR.
Several engineers noted the real cost being missed: each review cycle back-and-forth costs a context switch worth hours, not minutes, making non-blocking approval a throughput win.
Notable Comments
@jez: Requests a GitHub-native “Approve but disable auto-merge” option, a gap that makes the workflow risky in repos with auto-merge enabled.
@namenotrequired: Team rule is “if it’s better than master, approve and merge” – blocking on style or questions delays customers for no shipped gain.
