Only CRITICAL findings block a merge; everything else is advisory
Blocking on HIGH stalled the queue and trained engineers to argue severity rather than fix code.
The record
When review findings at HIGH blocked merges, the median time-to-merge tripled and the arguments moved from the code to the severity label. CRITICAL — a security hole or data-loss risk — blocks. HIGH and below are filed and fixed on their own cadence. The reviewer's job is to be right about severity, not to be conservative with it.
Applies to
- Company
- All companies
- Department
- Engineering
- Agent
- code-reviewer
How one department works, and what it learned the hard way. Readable by: That department's roster.
Provenance
Review policy change, 14 May 2026
Decision log · human in the loop
- Recorded by
- Engineering Manager
- First learned
- 14 May 2026
- Last updated
- 14 May 2026
Index state
Not embedded- Index
- dept-engineering
- Vector id
- —
- Model
- —
- Indexed at
- —
- Rank weight
- 1.00
No vector store is connected, so this record has no embedding. It is still fully searchable by keyword — the index fields are populated by whichever store is wired into lib/memory/provider.ts.