Ralph Review

Orchestrating coding agents for code review, verification, and fixing via the Ralph loop.

Table of Contents

• How It Works
• Reviewer and Fixer Flow
• Interactive Mode
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Commands
• Supported Coding Agents
• Configuration
• License

How It Works

Ralph Review now uses a batch-first workflow:

1. rr run performs review only.
2. The reviewer runs in a disposable session worktree and reports structured findings.
3. Findings are deduplicated across review iterations and persisted as a session artifact.
4. If findings exist, you choose which ones to fix with rr fix.
5. The fixer handles the selected findings in a separate batch remediation phase.
6. Resolved fixes are handed back to your working tree, either automatically or as a pending handoff
   to apply manually.

This keeps review and remediation separate by default. The reviewer can focus on finding real
issues, and the fixer treats those findings as input for a later, explicit remediation step.

Use rr run --auto when you want Ralph Review to run remediation immediately after review. Add
--priority P0,P1 to auto-fix only selected priority levels.

Reviewer and Fixer Flow

flowchart TD
    A[Your repository] --> B[rr run]
    B --> C[Preflight checks]
    C --> D[Start tmux session]
    D --> E[Create disposable review worktree]
    E --> F[Reviewer agent]
    F --> G{New findings?}
    G -- Yes --> H[Merge findings into inventory]
    H --> I{Max iterations reached or no new findings?}
    I -- No --> F
    I -- Yes --> J[Persist findings artifact]
    G -- No --> K[Clean review result]
    J --> L{Fix now?}
    L -- Later --> M[rr fix --session SESSION]
    L -- rr run --auto --> N[Select findings automatically]
    M --> O[Select findings by prompt, all, priority, or ID]
    N --> P[Create disposable fix worktree]
    O --> P
    P --> Q[Fixer agent batch remediation]
    Q --> R{Selected findings resolved?}
    R -- Yes --> S[Create handoff]
    S --> T{Auto-apply succeeds?}
    T -- Yes --> U[Fixes applied to working tree]
    T -- No --> V[Pending handoff]
    V --> W[rr apply or rr prune --discard]
    R -- No --> X[Retain remediation worktree for review]

Reviewer

The reviewer analyzes the selected review scope for correctness, security, reliability, and
maintainability issues introduced by the change. It outputs structured findings with stable IDs
such as F001, priorities P0 through P3, and source locations.

Reviewer iterations continue until no new findings are discovered or maxIterations is reached.
By default the run stops early when an iteration finds nothing new. Use --force to run the full
iteration count.

Fixer

The fixer runs only after findings have been persisted and selected. It receives the selected
finding inventory, works in a disposable fix worktree, and returns a per-finding result:
resolved or unresolved.

When all selected findings are resolved, Ralph Review creates a handoff. Depending on the working
tree state, the handoff may be applied automatically or left pending for rr apply. If selected
findings remain unresolved, Ralph Review keeps the remediation worktree available for inspection.

Interactive Mode

Run rr with no command to open Interactive Mode. It shows active sessions, recent session history,
review output, findings, fix results, and handoff status.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Prerequisites

• Bun (runtime)
• tmux (background sessions)
• At least one supported agent CLI installed and authenticated

Ralph Review is a Bun-only TypeScript CLI. Use Bun for development and script execution.

Installation

# Homebrew (install or update)
brew install kenryu42/tap/ralph-review

# npm (install or update)
npm install -g ralph-review

# Or let Ralph Review detect the install method and update itself
rr update

For update checks without installing, run:

rr update --check

If install-source detection is ambiguous, force the package manager:

rr update --manager npm
rr update --manager brew

Quick Start

# Configure reviewer and fixer agents
rr init

# Start Interactive Mode
rr

# Start a review-only background session
rr run

# Review against a base branch
rr run --base main

# Review staged, unstaged, and untracked changes
rr run --uncommitted

# Review a specific commit
rr run --commit SHA

# Fix findings after review completes
rr fix --session SESSION_ID --all

# Review and immediately fix P0/P1 findings
rr run --auto --priority P0,P1

rrr is a shorthand alias for rr run. It starts a non-interactive review run without launching
Interactive Mode.

Commands

You can append one positional custom instruction to rr run when an explicit review target is
selected:

rr run --base main "focus on security boundaries"

Supported Coding Agents

You can assign different agents and models to the reviewer and fixer roles. For example, Codex can
review while Claude or Gemini fixes.

Configuration

Run rr init to create configuration. Ralph Review supports a user-global config and repo-local
overrides:

• Global config: ~/.config/ralph-review/config.json
• Repo-local overrides: .ralph-review/config.json

By default, rr config show displays the effective merged configuration for the current project.

# View effective configuration
rr config show

# View raw JSON
rr config show --json

# View only repo-local overrides
rr config show --local

# View one value
rr config get reviewer.agent

# Update global configuration
rr config set maxIterations 8

# Update repo-local configuration
rr config set --local defaultReview.branch main

# Edit configuration in $EDITOR
rr config edit
rr config edit --local

Useful settings include:

Run rr doctor to verify that your environment and configuration are valid. Add --fix to let it
auto-resolve supported issues.

License

MIT