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Editor-native code review where comments and review state live in the repo, not a web UI

dev tool real project •• multiple requests

In a 91-comment lobste.rs thread on what people want from a forge, multiple independent developers converged on the same unmet need: review code in their own editor instead of a clunky web interface, with review comments and state stored inside the repository itself (pinned to commit hashes) so reviews are syncable, offline-capable, and survive rebases. The one tool that did this (Google's git-appraise) is dormant since 2021 and CLI-only. The opportunity is a maintained, editor-integrated review layer that keeps threads in the repo and re-reviews only what changed between iterations.

builder note

The leverage is jujutsu's stable change-ids. The hard part of re-review-only-what-changed is mapping comments across rebased or force-pushed iterations, which change-ids solve for free, so anchor comments to change-ids instead of line numbers or commit SHAs and you sidestep the comment-rot that makes web-UI re-review painful. The jj crowd is already asking for exactly this.

landscape (3 existing solutions)

The pieces exist in fragments. git-appraise proved repo-stored reviews, jujutsu proves stable change-ids for clean iteration diffing, and git range-diff proves the re-review math. But no maintained tool stitches them into an editor-native review experience, and the one purpose-built tool is abandoned.

git-appraise Stores review comments in the repo as git-notes, exactly the model people want, but it has been dormant since v0.7 in April 2021 and is CLI-only with no editor integration.
Gerrit and GitHub PR review Server-side web UIs (the clunky web interface complaint). Review state is not pinned to the commit hash, and iteration re-review across force-pushes and rebases is weak.
Tangled A federated (atproto) forge with round-based review, but a hosted platform with a web review surface, not a local-first tool that keeps review state inside your own repo for offline editor-based review.

sources (1)

other https://lobste.rs/s/wed6lj/what_would_you_want_from_forge "do code reviews locally in your editor of choice" 2026-05-19
code-reviewlocal-firstgiteditor-integrationjujutsu