I’ve been using two little shell functions to help me work with AI coding assistants: review_start and review_done. They let me do a full review pass in my editor, leave inline comments and fixes, and then hand the agent a commit containing just my feedback.

TL;DR

Add review_start and review_done to your ~/.bashrc (see below), then use this workflow:

# Have the agent implement feature XYZ
review_start "implemented XYZ"
# Review in your editor, making whatever changes you like
review_done
# Tell the agent to run `git show HEAD`. It will see just *your* changes.

The idea

review_start "implemented XYZ" does three things:

1. commits outstanding changes on your current branch,
2. creates a temporary review branch,
3. resets that branch back one commit while keeping the changes in your working tree.

So the agent’s work is persisted as a commit, but in your editor it still looks like ordinary uncommitted changes.

The resulting history is roughly:

A ── B ── C ── D  (my-feature)
          └────── (${USER}/review_in_progress), working tree contains changes from D

Here D is the snapshot commit. The review branch points at C, but your working tree still contains the diff from D, so you can review it naturally in your IDE (Ctrl+Shift+G in VS Code). While reviewing, I often:

• edit code directly,
• leave inline temporary comments like TDC: factor this out into a helper,
• ask questions like TDC: why did you do X here?

When I’m done, I run review_done. That switches back to the original branch, deletes the temporary review branch, and creates a new commit containing only my edits:

A ── B ── C ── D [agent snapshot] ── E [review feedback]   (my-feature)

Why I like this

The big win is that it turns “please address my review comments” into a concrete Git object.

• My requests are right next to the code I was looking at when I made the request.
• The agent can see what I already changed, so it is less likely to revert my manual fixes.
• It is token-efficient: I can supply the review commit in a single conversational turn instead of dribbling out comments one at a time.
• I don’t lose track of what I’ve already looked at, and the code doesn’t change under my feet while I’m reviewing it.

Installation

Put the contents of review_functions.sh in your ~/.bashrc, or include it like this:

if [ -f "/path/to/review_functions.sh" ]; then
  . "/path/to/review_functions.sh"
fi

Then reload your shell:

source ~/.bashrc

Caveats

A few important details:

• The current version uses git commit -am ..., so it handles tracked modified/deleted files but not new untracked files. If the agent created new files, git add them first.
• Only one review session can be active per repo.
• review_done expects you to still be on the review branch.