Review thread changes

Before you accept a thread's work, you usually want to look at the diff. There are four ways. Pick the one that matches the situation.

1. /diff inside the thread's pane

Switch into the thread (click its row in the ThreadList), then run /diff. The modal shows every uncommitted change in that thread's worktree. Scroll, eyeball, close.

This is the fastest option. Works on any thread, including Dispatch's own changes in Cowboy mode.

2. Open the worktree in your editor

The /diff modal has two buttons:

  • open workspace opens the entire thread worktree as a project.
  • edit on a file's header opens just that file with a diff view.

Both use the editor set under /settings → Editor, which defaults to vim. If you'd rather see the worktree in a regular IDE than land in vim for the whole project, switch to VS Code or Cursor under /settings → Editor first.

Use this option when the diff is too large to skim in the modal, or when you want to run something against the worktree before accepting: a test suite, a typecheck, your own linter.

3. Let self-review handle it

After every turn that produces code changes, the thread automatically runs the code-review subagent on its own diff. The prompt is fixed: remove anything that drifted from the original request, simplify where possible. You don't trigger it.

Toggle this under /settings → Self-review after code changes. See Self review.

4. Ask for a focused review

Type something like "use the code-review agent to look at the auth changes for security issues." The thread spawns the same code-review subagent that self-review uses, but with a prompt of your choosing. Use this for narrowly-scoped reviews (security, performance, test coverage) where the default drift-removal pass isn't enough.

Both 3 and 4 always run on the opposite provider from the driver: Claude driver, GPT reviewer; GPT driver, Claude reviewer. The cross-provider rule for the code-review subagent can't be turned off; it's by design. Self-review's automatic trigger can be turned off, but the subagent itself runs cross-provider whenever it's invoked. See Agent model.

When to use which

  • Trivial change you can eyeball: /diff.
  • Large diff, or you want to run tests against it: open the worktree in your editor.
  • Extra quality gate on every change: leave self-review on. It runs whether you look at the diff or not.
  • Security, performance, or other targeted concern: ask for a focused review.

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