Ship an OSS Patch With a Reviewer Question Bank, Not Just a Diff

Description and use

Introducing a REVIEWER_QUESTIONS.md file speeds up PR reviews by providing concrete questions and evidence that reviewers can quickly verify.

Problem

Maintainers stall on pull requests with minimal diffs and no reproduction or evidence, leading to delayed reviews and contributor frustration.

Outcome

Reviewers can quickly assess reproduction, public surface changes, negative paths, regression tests, commit shape, and documentation needs, reducing review time and improving contributor experience.

Workflow

• Freeze the failing command and record it in the question bank
• Ensure every hunk is load‑bearing and avoid unrelated refactors
• Collect exit codes for the failing command, unit tests, and negative paths
• Draft the question bank using a coding model or manually
• Add the REVIEWER_QUESTIONS.md alongside the patch branch
• Submit the PR with the question bank for review

Evidence

The proposed artifact is a single Markdown file named REVIEWER_QUESTIONS.md that lives beside the patch branch.

Source

Unanswered items remain marked TODO so a local gate can refuse to open the pull request.

Source