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

Today I came across a PR for a (in theory) relatively simple service.

It span across 9000 LOC, 63 new files, including a DSL parser and much more.

How would you go about reviewing a PR like this?

Ask the submitter to review and leave their comments first or do a peer code review with them and force them to read the code. It's probably the first time they'll have read the code as well...

You review it like it wasn't AI generated. That is: ask author to split it in reviewable blocks. Or if you don't have an obligation to review it, you leave it there.

Enforce stacked PRs, reject PRs over 500-1k LoC (I'd argue even lower, but it's a hard sell)

Just reflect upon it, see if you gave him less time to complete it. I would just have a meet with him and confront it.

Use AI to generate the review, obviously.

In my opinion no PR should have so much changes. It's impossible to review such things.

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.

9000 LOC is way too long for a pull request unless there is some very special circumstance.

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

I'd just reject it for being ridiculous. It didn't pass the first step of the review process: the sniff test.

Charitably, even though it is not what you or I would do, the pull request could be a best good faith effort of a real human being.

So to me, it's less about being ridiculous (and "ridiculous" is a fighting word) and more a simple "that's not how this team does things because we don't have the resources to work that way."

Mildly hurt feelings in the most likely worst case (no food for a viral overtop tweet). At best recruitment of someone with cultural fit.

My objection to a PR like this has nothing to do with whether or not a human wrote it. It's that the PR is too large and complex. The reason I'd give for rejecting it would be that. I wouldn't say "it's ridiculous" as the reason. I would 100% be thinking that, though.

That’s good.

My experience is “too large/complex” provides an opening for arguementivenes and/or drama.

“We don’t do it like this” does not so much. It is social, sufficient and not a matter of opinion (“too” is a matter of opinion).

reject outright. ask to split it into reasonable chain of changesets.

With a middle finger

Reject it

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