C

Review a Pull Request in a Separate Worktree

Check out a PR branch for code review without leaving your current feature work.

worktreepull requestcode reviewworkflowparallel development

When to use

A teammate asks for a code review, but you are in the middle of uncommitted changes on your feature branch. Use a worktree to check out their PR branch separately.

Pre-flight

  • Know the PR number or branch name you need to review.
  • Ensure you have fetch access to the remote repository.

Steps

  1. Fetch the PR branch from GitHub. This creates a local reference you can check out.

    git fetch origin pull/123/head:pr-123

    Replace 123 with the actual PR number.

  2. Create a worktree for the PR branch in a sibling directory.

    git worktree add ../review-pr-123 pr-123

  3. Navigate to the review directory and explore the code.

    cd ../review-pr-123
# Run tests, check linting, review changes
npm test
npm run lint

  4. Once the review is complete, return to your main directory and clean up.

    cd ../your-main-repo
git worktree remove ../review-pr-123
git branch -d pr-123

Verification

  • git worktree list shows only your main worktree after cleanup.
  • Your original feature branch remains untouched with all uncommitted changes intact.

Alternative: Review a remote branch directly

If the PR branch is already pushed to origin, skip the fetch step:

git worktree add ../review-feature origin/feat/user-auth

Follow-up

  • Leave your review comments on the PR in GitHub.
  • If changes are needed, the author can push updates and you can pull them into the same worktree.

Related scenarios