Cross-family AI review before human PR review
After six months of agent-only coding, a commenter routes every PR through a different-model-family reviewer plus deterministic gates before looking at it.
- Agent or tool
- Codex
- Topic
- Software Development
- Reported on
- Hacker News
- Added
- 2026-10-15
Why it matters
Coding agents are moving from autocomplete to doing whole tasks: reading a codebase, making a plan and changing many files. This case is a concrete example of where that works in practice. It is one of 106 sightings filed under Software Development on Agent Sightings (number 10 by interest), and one of 32 involving Codex.
How you could try it
Here is a reusable prompt, written by us in our own words, that captures the task. Paste it into Codex or any similar agent and adjust the details to your situation.
Review this PR as a different model family than the author. Check correctness, security and missing tests. Return only actionable findings; do not rewrite the whole diff.
The prompt breaks down into 3 steps you can check as the agent works:
- Review this PR as a different model family than the author.
- Check correctness, security and missing tests.
- Return only actionable findings; do not rewrite the whole diff.
Tip: Work on a fresh branch, ask for a plan before edits, and review the diff and test results before merging.
Source
Read the original first-hand account on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49465119. Our summary is a paraphrase; details are in the source.