Navigate a change

| A large pull request is a navigation problem before it is a reading problem. Change Stack gives you four ways through one: primary views that answer different questions about the same change, rails that walk the artifact by layer or by file, a search over everything already loaded, and links that address any point in the artifact precisely enough to paste into a conversation.

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Primary views

The primary views are rows at the top of the left rail, above the divider that separates them from Layer 1. Click one to switch. Each answers a different question about the same snapshot, and switching between them does not change which snapshot you are on. Blast Radius and Architecture Impact are produced by CodeRabbit Security; Change Stack displays them for the snapshot you have open and links their findings back into the code. Findings covers what the Overview puts in front of you and how it ranks it.

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The left rail

The left rail walks the artifact, in one of two modes. Layers are the mode to default to, because the ordering is the point: it is the reading order the change deserves rather than the alphabetical one the provider gives you. Switch to files when you are looking for something specific rather than reading the change through. Inside a layer, the content splits by what you want beside the code: Diagrams are Mermaid diagrams generated per layer, and the kind is picked to fit the change: a class diagram for schema and type changes, a sequence diagram for API and request/response flows, a flowchart for validation and data movement, a state diagram for lifecycle transitions, an entity-relationship diagram for persistence changes. A layer with nothing worth drawing — tests, configuration, documentation, cosmetic edits — gets no diagram, and the tab is empty rather than showing a trivial one. The review context beside the code splits the same way:

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The right panel

The right panel is either review context — summaries, comments, and the context for the range you have selected — or chat. It shows one at a time.

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The command palette and keyboard

The command palette moves between views, layers, and files without touching the rails, and it doubles as the shortcut reference: every command it lists shows the key that runs it. Open it with Cmd/Ctrl+K or ?. The same navigation is available through responsive controls on a narrow screen, where the rails collapse. Change Stack is built to be driven from the keyboard, and the shortcuts are worth learning if you review often. Focus mode hides both rails and the review context beside the diff, leaving the code on its own. It is the shortcut to reach for when a layer is dense and the chrome is in the way. Shift+J, Shift+K and C follow whichever tab the review context panel is showing: on Summaries they step through this layer’s range summaries and comment on the one you are on, and on Comments they step through its comment threads — CodeRabbit findings and human comments alike — and reply to the one you are on. Switching that tab changes what those three keys act on. There is no keyboard shortcut and no command-palette entry for switching primary views; that is the left rail’s job. Inside the diff, ↑ and ↓, PageUp and PageDown, Space and Shift+Space, and Home and End scroll the pane. In the comment composer, Cmd/Ctrl+Enter submits and Esc cancels.

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Search the artifact

Search runs in your browser against the artifact already loaded, so it returns results as fast as you can type and works across five kinds of content at once. Five sources, each filterable on its own: file paths, diff text, indexed source content, generated summaries, and review comments. Two properties of a browser-side search are worth knowing rather than discovering. Results are capped: a blank search returns at most 60 indexed records, and a query returns at most 200 ranked results. On a large artifact a broad query will hit that ceiling, so narrow the query or pick a source filter rather than scrolling for something that was never in the list.

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Track what you have read

You can mark a file viewed and see reviewed-file progress for the snapshot you are on, which is what keeps a multi-session review from restarting every time you come back to it. Progress is recorded against the displayed snapshot, so it describes what you read of that review run. On GitHub, marking a file viewed also ticks GitHub’s own Viewed checkbox on that file, so your progress is visible to other reviewers and survives a switch back to the GitHub interface. On GitLab and Bitbucket the marker is stored by CodeRabbit only — the provider has no equivalent state to sync to — so it is yours alone and does not appear on the merge request or pull request.

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Share a link

Change Stack links address a specific place in the artifact: the change itself, a primary view, a layer, a file, or a range. That precision is what makes a link worth pasting into a conversation — you can point a colleague at the eleven lines you are actually asking about rather than at the pull request. Two link behaviors surprise people, and both are worth knowing before you paste. A bare Change Stack URL opens the first layer, while an explicit overview URL opens the Overview. If you want someone to land on the Overview, link to it explicitly rather than assuming the bare link will get them there.

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Public links

A Change Stack artifact for a public repository can be opened through a shareable locator without an authenticated CodeRabbit session, which is what makes it usable in an open-source discussion or a bug report. Anonymous access is limited to public GitHub and GitLab artifacts; Bitbucket requires authentication, and Azure DevOps artifacts are read-only. See provider support.

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The activity timeline

The timeline puts pull-request activity and review checkpoints on one chronological surface, grouped into categories you can filter. Five categories are on by default and carry the substance of what happened: CodeRabbit review activity, commits, submitted reviews, comments, and pull request status changes. Three more are off by default, and you turn them on when you are reconstructing a history rather than reading forward: bots, housekeeping for administrative changes, and misc for anything outside the named categories. The timeline pages through history at 30 events per request, up to 100.

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What’s next