Ask HN: How to deal with long vibe-coded PRs?

Depends on the context. Is this from:

1. A colleague in your workplace. You go "Hey ____, That's kind of a big PR, I am not sure I can review this in a reasonable time frame can you split it up to more manageable pieces? PS: Do we really need a DSL for this?"

2. A new contributor to your open source project. You go "Hey ____, Thanks for your interest in helping us develop X. Unfortunately we don't have the resources to go over such a large PR. If you are still interested in helping please consider taking a swing at one of our existing issues that can be found here."

3. A contributor you already know. You go "Hey I can't review this ___, its just too long. Can we break it up to smaller parts?"

Regardless of the situation be honest, and point out you just can't review that long a PR.

For work? Close it and remind them that their AI velocity doesn't save the company time if it takes me many hours (or even days depending on the complexity of the 9k lines) to review something intended to be merged into an important service. Ask them to resubmit a smaller one and justify the complexity of things like a DSL if they wanted it included. If my boss forces me to review it, then I do so and start quietly applying for new jobs where my job isn't to spend 10x (or 100x) more time reviewing code than my coworkers did "writing" it.

Edit: left out that the user got flamed by non contributors for their apparently AI generated PR and description (rude), in defense of which they did say they were using several AI tools to drive the work. :

We have a performance working group which is the venue for discussing perf based work. Some of your ideas have come up in that venue, please go make issues there to discuss your ideas

my 2 cents on AI output: these tools are very useful, please wield them in such a way that it respects the time of the human who will be reading your output. This is the longest PR description I have ever read and it does not sound like a human wrote it, nor does it sound like a PR description. The PR also does multiple unrelated things in a single 1k line changeset, which is a nonstarter without prior discussion.

I don't doubt your intention is pure, ty for wanting to contribute.

There are norms in open source which are hard to learn from the outside, idk how to fix that, but your efforts here deviate far enough from them in what I assume is naivety that it looks like spam.

That alone should be the reason to block it. But LLM generated code is not protected by law, and by extension you can damage your code base.

My company does not allow LLM generated code into anything that is their IP. Generic stuff outside of IP is fine, but every piece has to flagged that it is created by an LLM.

In short, these are just the next evolution of low quality PRs.

“This PR is really long and I’m having a hard time finding the energy to review it all. My brains gets full before I get to the end. Does it need to be this long?”

Force them to make a case for it. Then see how they respond. I’d say good answers could include:

- “I really trieeld to make it smaller, but I couldn’t think of a way, here’s why…”

- “Now that I think about it, 95% of this code could be pushed into a separate library.”

- “To be honest, I vibe coded this and I don’t understand all of it. When I try to make it smaller, I can’t find a way. Can we go through it together?”

In your case, I'd just reject it and ensure repo merges require your approval.

AI is red herring in discussions like this. How the change was authored makes no difference here.

I wouldn't. I'd reject it. I'd reject it even if the author had lovingly crafted each line by hand. A change request is not "someone must check my work". It's a collaboration between an author and a reviewer. If the author is failing to bother respecting the reviewer's time then they don't deserve to get a review.

"Thanks for the effort, but my time and energy is limited and I can't practically review this much code, so I'm closing this PR. We are interested in performance improvements, so you are welcome to pick out your #1 best idea for performance improvement, discuss it with the maintainers via ..., and then (possibly) open a focused PR which implements that improvement only."

The PR would then be split into small ones up to 400 lines long.

In truth, such a big PR is an indicator that either (a) the original code is a complete mess and needs reengineering or more likely (b) the PR is vibe coded and is making lots of very poor engineering decisions and goes in the bin.

We don’t use AI agents for coding. They’re not ready. Autocomplete is fine. Agents don’t reason like engineers, they make crap PRs.

10 lines of code = 10 issues.

500 lines of code = "looks fine."

Code reviews.

The you can say (and this is hard), this looks like it is vibe code and misses that first human pass we want to see in these situations (link), please review and afterwards feel free to (re)submit.

In my experience they'll go away. Or they come back with something that isn't cleaned up and you point out just one thing. Or sometimes! they actually come back with the right thing.

I'd ask for them to write their thought process, why they made the decisions they made, what the need for so many files and so many changes. I may ask for a videoconference to understand better, if it's a collegue from work.

By now hopefully you should know if their approach is valid or not really. If not sure yet, then I'd take a look at the code, specially at the parts they refer to most importantly in their answer to my previous questions. So not a detailed review, a more general approach, to decide if this is valid or not.

If it's a valid approach, then I guess I'd review it. If not, then give feedback as to how to make it valid, and why it isn't.

Not valid is very subjective. From "this is just garbage", to "this is a good approach, but we can implement this iteratively in separate PRs that will make my life easier", again, it depends on your and their position.

The question itself doesn't matter. Just ask something. If their answer is genuine and making sense you deal with it like a normal PR. If their answer is LLM-generated too then block.

My more professional side says invite the person to review it together - I do this for big or confusing PRs regardless of AI and it is both helpful and a natural backpressure to big PRs.

My tactical side says invite the person to show you their ai process because wow that's a lot of code that's super cool if it's good enough and then see if the AI can turn the PR into small, coherent, atomic chunks (rewritten with some arch learned from the existing project) and leave the person with those prompts and workflows.

My manager side already is very explicit with the team that code review is the bottleneck AND the code both working and being easy to understand is the authors responsibility, which makes these conversations much much easier.

Or just refuse to review and let the author take full responsibility in running and maintaining the thing, if that's possible. A PR is asking someone else to share responsibility in the thing.

Even 1000 lines is pushing it, IMO. Tell them to split the PR up into more granular work if they want it merged.

One suggestion that possibly is not covered is that you/we can document clearly how AI generated PRs will be handled, make it easy for contributors to discover it and if/when such PR shows up refer the documented section to save yourself time.

The only exception is some large migration or version upgrade that required lots of files to change.

As far it goes for Vibe coded gigantic PRs It's a straight reject from me.

I would ask them to break it up into smaller chunks.

Personally I think it's difficult to address these kinds of PR's but I also think that git is terrible at providing solutions to this problem.

The concept of stacked PR's are fine up to the point where you need to make changes throughout all yours branches, then it becomes a mess. If you (like me) might have a tendency to rewrite your solution several times before ending up with the final result, then having to split this into several PR's does not help anyone. The first PR will likely be outdated the moment I begin working on the next.

Open source is also more difficult in this case because contrary to working for a company with a schedule, deadlines etc... you can't (well you shouldn't) rush a review when it's on your own time. As such PR's can sit for weeks or months without being addressed. When you eventually need to reply to comments about how, why etc.. you have forgotten most of it and needs to read the code yourself to re-claim the reasoning. At that time it might be easier to re-read a 9000 lines PR over time rather than reading 5-10 PR's with maybe meaningful descriptions and outcome where the implementation changes every time.

Also, if it's from a new contributor, I wouldn't accept such a PR, vibe coded or not.

1. Reject it on the grounds of being too large to meaningfully review. Whether they used AI or not, this is effectively asking them to start over in an iterative process where you review every version of the thing and get to keep complexity in check. You'll need the right power and/or standing for this to be a reasonable option. At many organisations, you'd get into trouble for it as "blocking progress". If the people that pay you don't value reliability or maintainability, and you couldn't convince them that they should, that's a tough one, but it is how it is.

2. Actually review it in good faith: Takes a ton of time for large, over engineered changes, but as the reviewer, it is usually your job to understand the code and take on responsibility for it. You could propose to help out by addressing any issues you find yourself rather than making them do it, they might like that. This feels like a compromise, but you could still be seen as the person "blocking progress", despite, from my perspective, biting the bullet here.

3. Accept it without understanding it. For this you could _test_ it and give feedback on the behaviour, but you'd ignore the architecture, maintainability etc. You could still collaboratively improve it after it goes live. I've seen this happen to big (non-AI generated) PRs a lot. It's not always a bad thing. It might not be good code, but it could well be good business regardless.

Now, however you resolve it, it seems like this won't be the last time you'll struggle to work with that person. Can, and do they want to, change? Do you want to change? If you can't answer either of these questions with a yes, you'll probably want to look for ways of not working with them going forward.

The client would have loved be use it, as it was much easier to use. But in the end it was premature, not tested, and not adjustable to the client needs on-site. Too many states, even a global postgresql store. Super fragile. So I had to sidestep the new shiny Claude generated react code, after 2 people tried to fix it for 3 weeks, implemented the basic new features on the old system in a day, and this works stable now. No global state, just a single job file you copy there manually.

Enforce good SW practises. Test that it works. Have a backup solution ready if it doesn't work. Have simulators to test real behaviors. My simulators saved my day.

In my eyes, there really shouldn't be more than 2-3 "full" files worth of LOC for any given PR (which should aim to to address 1 task/bug each. If not, maybe 2-3 at most), and general wisdom is to aim to keep "full" files around 600 LOC each (For legacy code, this is obviously very flexible, if not infeasible. But it's a nice ideal to keep in mind).

An 1800-2000 LOC PR is already pushing what I'd want to review, but I've reviewed a few like that when laying scaffolding for a new feature. Most PR's are usually a few dozen lines in 4-5 files each, so it's far below that.

9000 just raises so many red flags. Do they know what problem they are solving? Can they explain their solution approach? Give general architectual structure to their implementation? And all that is before asking the actual PR concerns of performance, halo effects, stakeholders, etc.

As example, you have made summarization app. User is try to upload 1 TB file. What you do? Reject request.

You have made summarization app. User is try upload 1 byte file 1000 times. What you do? Reject request.

However, this is for accidental or misconfigured user. What if you have malicious user? There are many technique for this as well: hell-ban, tarpit, limp.

For hell-ban simply do not handle request. It appear to be handled but is not.

For tarpit, raise request maker difficulty. e.g. put Claude Code with Github MCP on case, give broad instructions to be very specific and request concise code and split etc. etc. then put subsequent PRs also into CC with Github MCP.

For limp, provide comment slow using machine.

Assuming you're not working with such person. If working with such person, email boss and request they be fired. For good of org, you must kill the demon.

I'll just assume good intent first of all. Second, 9000 LOC spanning 63 lines is not necessarily an AI generated code. It could be a code mod. It could be a prolific coder. It could be a lot of codegen'd code.

Finally, the fact that someone is sending you 9000 LOC code hints that they find this OK, and this is an opportunity to align on your values. If you find it hard to review, tell them that I find it hard to review, I can't follow the narrative, its too risky, etc. etc.

Code review is almost ALWAYS an opportunity to have a conversation.

- Large prs - vibe coding - development quality”

If expectations have been shared and these changes contradict them, you can quickly close the PR, explain why it's not acceptable, and ask them to redo it.

If you don't have clear guidelines on AI usage or haven't shared your expectations, you'll need to review the PR more carefully. First, verify whether your assumption that it’s a simple service is accurate (although from your description, it sounds like it is). If it is, talk to the author and point out that it's more complicated than necessary. You can also ask if they used AI and warn them about the complexities it can introduce.

How does one handle that with tact and not lose their minds?

If I thought the service should only be 1000 lines tops:

- Reject due to excess complexity.

If it is a proper solution:

- Use AI to review it, asking it to be VERY critical of the code, and look for spots where human review may be needed, architecture wise, design wise and implementation wise.

- Ask the AI again to do a security review etc.

- Tell the author to break the PR down into human size chunks using git.

Why those things? It's likely some manager is gonna tell me review it anyways. And if so, I want to have a head start, and if there's critical shoot down level issues I can find with an AI quickly. I'd just shut the PR down now.

As in any "security" situation, in this case the security of your codebase and sanity, defense in depth is the answer.

Unless you really trust them, it's up to the contributor to make their reasoning work for the target. Else, they are free to fork it if it's open source :).

I am a believer in using llm codegen as a ride along expert, but it definitely triggers my desire to over test software. I treat most codegen as the most junior coder had written it, and set up guardrails against as many things llm and I can come up with.

Above all, you aim to allow the contributor to be productive, you make it clear what constraints they need to operate under in order to use AI codegen effectively. You want to come across as trying to help them and need to take care not to appear obstructive or dismissive.

Was your project asking for all this? No? Reject.

The fact that someone submitted this PR in that state though...

1k added lines is imo already pushing it.

9k and 63 files is astronomical and very difficult to review.

A proper review means being able to understand the system and what's being changed, how, and why in order to be able to judge if it was done properly and includes everything it should and nothing it shouldn't.

9k lines is just too much to be able to do this properly.

I created a tool in VSCode for this called Intraview. It allows you to create a dynamic code tour to provide feedback.

It works with your existing agent and creates a sharable tour that you can navigate and provide feedback step by step.

Rationally, this is much easier than reviewing the diff, because you can prompt to break up the PR logically so you can approve in functional pieces.

If an engineer really cared, they would discuss these changes with you. Each new feature would be added incrementally and ensuring that it doesn’t break the rest of the system. This will allow you to understand their end goal while giving them an avenue to achieve it without disrupting your end goal.

In your case, 9000 LOC and 63 files isn't that crazy for a DSL. Does the DSL serve a purpose? Or is it just someone's feature fever dream to put your project on their resume?

Version A: find 100 LOC which can be reduced to 50 LOC without changing the functionality. Then ask the author to go through the PR making sure it's not bloated. Repeat.

Version B: find hidden bugs. Ask the author to fix them. Repeat.

Keep them occupied saving your face. I would also fine tune an own agent to automatise this kind of work for me.

State the PR is too large to be reviewed, and ask the author to break it down into self-contained units.

Also, ask which functional requirements the PR is addressing.

Ask for a PR walkthrough meeting to have the PR author explain in detail to an audience what they did and what they hope to achieve.

Establish max diff size for PRs to avoid this mess.

This is partly a joke, but it works: Rewrite your project in an obscure, unpopular, uncool programming language, that LLMs cannot use to meaningfully write code. You will get zero vibe-coded PRs and you will remain in a full control over your source code.

The question is what was the original task that needed to be fixed? I doubt it required a custom DSL.

Issue a research task first to design the scope of the fix, what needs to be changed and how.

PRs should be under 1000 lines.

The alternative is to sit down with them and ask what they're trying to accomplish and solve the problem from that angle.

5 minutes, off the cuff.

ask them to walk you through it

ask for design doc if appropriate

what is test plan who is responsible for prod delivery and support

(no difference from any other large pr)

[ Close with comment ]

As someone on the "senior" side AI has been very helpful in speeding up my work. As I work with many languages, many projects I haven't touched in months and while my code is relatively simple the underlying architecture is rather complex. So where I do use AI my prompts are very detailed. Often I spot mistakes that get corrected etc. With this I still see a big speedup (at least 2x,often more). The quality is almost the same.

However, I noticed many "team leads" try to use the AI as an excuse to push too difficult tasks onto "junior" people. The situation described by the OP is what happens sometimes.

Then when I go to the person and ask for some weird thing they are doing I get "I don't know, copilot told me"...

Many times I tried to gently steer such AI users towards using it as a learning tool. "Ask it to explain to you things you don't understand" "Ask questions about why something is written this way" and so on. Not once I saw it used like this.

But this is not everyone. Some people have this skill which lets them get a lot more out of pair programming and AI. I had a couple trainees in the current team 2 years ago that were great at this. This way as "pre-AI" in this company, but when I was asked to help them they were asking various questions and 6 months later they were hired on permanent basis. Contrast this with: - "so how should I change this code"? - You give them a fragment, they go put it in verbatim and come back via teams with a screenshot of an error message...

Basically expecting you will do the task for them. Not a single question. No increased ability to do it on their own.

This is how they try to use AI as well. And it's a huge time waster.

That said, even with automated review, a 9000 line PR is still a hard reject. The real issue is that the submitter probably doesn't understand the code either. Ask them to walk you through it or break it down into smaller pieces. If they can't, that tells you everything.

The asymmetry is brutal though. Takes an hour to generate 9000 lines, takes days to review it properly. We need better tooling to handle this imbalance.

(Biased take: I'm building cubic.dev to help with this exact problem. Teams like n8n and Resend use it to catch issues automatically so reviewers can focus on what matters. But the human review is still essential.)

(ctrl-v)

The greater danger is that AI can create or modify code into something that is disconnected, stubbed, and/or deceptive and claim it’s complete. This is much worse because it wastes much more time, but AI can fix this too, just like it can the slop- maybe not deterministically, but it can.

And because of this, those that get in the way of creating source with AI are just cavemen rejecting fire.

Personally, I've felt drained dealing with small PRs fixing actual bugs by enthusiastic students new to projects in the pre-slop era.

Particularly if I felt they were doing it more to say they'd done it, rather than to help the project.

I imagine that motive might help drive an increase in this kind of thing.

I once had someone submit a patch (back in the SVN days), that was massive, and touched everything in my system. I applied it, and hundreds of bugs popped up.

I politely declined it, but the submitter got butthurt, anyway. He put a lot of work into it.

Maybe getting their own time wasted will teach the submitter about the value of clarity and how it feels to be on the receiving end of a communication with highly asymmetric effort.

oh no

A simple email could tell the difference.

Then ban the idiot who submitted it.

If the code sucks, reject it. If it doesn't, accept it.

This isn't hard.

If they don't bother writing the code, why should you bother reading it? Use an LLM to review it, and eventually approve it. Then of course, wait for the customer to complain, and feed the complaint back to the LLM. /s

Large LLM generated PRs are not a solution. They just shift the problem to the next person in the chain.

Sometimes it doesn't split it among optimal boundaries, but it's usually good enough to help. There's probably room for improvement and extension (eg. re-splitting a branch containing many not-logical commits, moving changes between commits, merging commits, ...) – contributions welcome!

You can install it as a Claude Code plugin here: https://github.com/KevinWuWon/kww-claude-plugins (or just copy out the prompt from the repo into your agent of choice)