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Reviews

You review what an agent produced the way you review a pull request: comment on lines, then send all your comments at once with a verdict. The agent answers each comment, revises its work, and asks for your next review. You can review:

• a plan or any Markdown file, on its rendered blocks;
• any text file, on its lines;
• the uncommitted changes of the project folder or of a worktree, or what a branch changed since its base.

With Review before commit on, agents wait for your approval before they commit.

Comment

• On a plan or a Markdown file: hover a block and click + in its margin. Shift-click another block for a range. Suggest edit proposes new text for the block, and Delete block proposes to remove it.
• On the source of a file: click + in the margin of a line, or drag over a range. In a diff, both the old and the new lines take comments.
• Suggest, in the comment editor, starts a suggestion with the text of the lines: edit it into the text you want, and the agent receives it exactly.
• Ctrl+Enter saves a comment and Esc cancels it.

A comment is a draft until you submit the review, and drafts survive a restart. A comment follows its lines when the file changes. When its lines themselves change, it stays on the lines that took their place and is marked outdated until the agent answers it.

The review bar above the file counts the comments, jumps to each one, and has Submit review.

In a rendered plan or Markdown file, Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) finds text: Enter and Shift+Enter go to the next and previous match, Alt+C, Alt+W and Alt+R match case, whole words or a regular expression, and Esc closes it.

Review the changes

In CodeAlta Desktop you can review the changes of a project or a worktree without waiting for an agent to ask. Open them in review mode:

• Review in the header of the Changes tab reviews what the tab compares: the Uncommitted changes, or all the changes of the branch since its base (not a single commit of the history);
• Review changes in the menu of a session, or /review_changes, opens the Changes tab on the folder or worktree the session works in;
• Open beside Changes waiting for your review, above the prompt of a session (see Review before commit).

The Changes tab stays in review mode while comments are not resolved or an agent waits for your review; once you answer the agent, here or in its session, it stays only while comments are not resolved. Click Review again to leave it.

In review mode:

• Comment on the lines of each side of a diff. Inline, only new lines take comments; comments on old lines are listed above the diff, with Show side by side.
• Comment on the whole file, in the header of a file, comments on the file itself.
• Viewed, in the same header, marks a file you have read; the review bar counts them (3/7 files viewed). A file that changes again loses the mark.
• Beside the files, Files lists the changed files with their number of comments, and Comments lists every comment, including those on files that no longer have changes.

Key (outside a text field)	What it does
c	Comments the line of the caret.
n / p	Goes to the next or previous comment, across files.
] / [	Goes to the next or previous file.
v	Marks the file Viewed, or not.

The review bar says what is reviewed, where, how many files you viewed and which session asked for the review, or Approved while the changes are the ones you approved. Submit review sends it to that session; otherwise you choose one.

Submit a review

Submit review sends every draft, and every comment still open from earlier rounds, as one message:

Verdict	What the agent does
Approve	Goes on: commits the approved changes, or carries the plan out.
Request changes	Revises its work for your comments, then asks for your next review.
Comment	Answers your comments, without a verdict.

You can add an overall comment and choose the session that receives the review: a session waiting for it gets it at once, another gets it after its current work, and New session starts one (in Plan mode for a plan). The review shows in the session as a compact card.

Answers and resolving

The agent answers each comment under it, and the comment is marked addressed. You decide when a comment is done:

• Resolve closes a comment; Reopen opens it again;
• Resolve addressed closes every comment the agent addressed;
• Approve closes the addressed comments of what you approve;
• a reply of yours, or an edit of your comment, asks the agent again.

To end a review whatever its state, click the trash of the review bar, or Delete review in Work items, and confirm: its comments, replies and rounds are deleted, and an agent waiting for it is told it was cancelled. A plan that is removed, or deleted when done, takes its review with it.

Requests from an agent

An agent can ask for your review of a file or of its changes. In Plan mode it always does, for its plan:

• a file opens in place of the timeline, with the agent's questions, if any, and the verdict where you write the prompt;
• changes show a card with Open review, which opens the Changes tab on its checkout.

When you submit, the review and your answers go back to the agent in one message.

Review before commit

When Review before commit is on, agents never commit by themselves. When their work is done, they ask for your review of the changes and stop. They commit once you approve, and only what you approved: a change made after your approval needs a new review. CodeAlta refuses an unapproved commit, whatever the permission mode of the session, and tells the agent which files changed since your approval.

• Settings > Sessions > Reviews > Review changes before commit turns it on for every session.
• The form of the Agent chip under the prompt has a Review before commit row: On, Off, or the setting (marked Default). Change it at any time; an eye on the chip shows it is on. The agent is told with its next prompt.
• The form of a new session has the same row.

While it is on, the line above the prompt says Changes waiting for your review when the session has uncommitted changes that you did not approve, nothing runs and the agent has not asked yet: click Open. What stays uncommitted after your approval, unchanged, waits for nothing. Whether it is on or not, the same line shows your unsubmitted draft comments on the session's folder or worktree (2 draft comments), with Open.

In CodeAlta TUI, agents do not commit either: they leave the changes uncommitted and tell you. Review them in CodeAlta Desktop.

All your reviews

Work items lists the reviews beside the tasks and plans: choose Reviews there, run Reviews from the command palette, or click the eye of a review bar.

• To do holds what waits for you: a review an agent asked for, comments the agent answered, drafts you have not submitted, and reviews whose file or worktree is gone, waiting for you to delete them.
• In progress holds what waits for the agent: comments it has not answered yet.
• A plan under review shows an eye in the list.
• Select a review to see its request, comments and last verdict. Open review opens it, Delete review ends it, and Reload reads the plans and reviews again.

Reviews are kept by CodeAlta, outside your repository: they never show in the changes you review and are never committed.

Agents and alta review

Ask in plain words, such as "Ask for my review of the changes before you commit them." Agents use alta review, in CodeAlta Desktop and CodeAlta TUI:

alta review request file .alta/plans/2026-10-20-x.md --stdin
alta review request changes
alta review request branch
alta review status
alta review list
alta review reply --stdin

A review request can carry questions too; alta ask only asks questions. CodeAlta TUI reviews a file with line comments and a verdict question; reviews of changes need CodeAlta Desktop.